The tax is payable if

• your bus or coach is not registered in Germany and
• you transport passengers in occasional traffic across a third country border of the Federal Republic of Germany in return for payment. Occasional transport means, for example, excursions, trips to vacation destinations and transport with rental buses. A third-country border of the Federal Republic of Germany is a border with a country that is not a member of the European Union, i.e. the borders between Switzerland and Germany and at the German seaports.

You must pay the tax regardless of whether you run a company based in Germany or abroad or whether you transport German or foreign passengers. The tax is due as soon as the bus crosses the border. The customs office at the border collects the VAT for each individual transport operation using the so-called individual transport taxation procedure.

In the individual transport taxation procedure, VAT is calculated on the basis of an average transport charge. The average transport charge is 4.43 cents, and the sales tax at a tax rate of 19 percent is therefore 0.84 cents for every passenger kilometer you travel in the Federal Republic of Germany. You calculate the passenger kilometers by multiplying the number of persons transported by the number of kilometers actually covered by the bus in the Federal Republic of Germany.
For example: If you transport 50 people in a bus over 100 kilometers in Germany, the result is 5000 passenger kilometers.

No input tax amounts are taken into account for individual transport taxation. This means that the VAT you pay when purchasing goods or services for your company, known as input tax, is not refunded. However, you can apply for a refund of input tax amounts if the input tax is related to the transportation of passengers that was subject to individual transport taxation.