My wife and I both are working and my wife is expecting a baby in the coming months. We have some doubts about elternzeit & elterngeld and we would appreciate your replies to the following.

1. We both have tax class 4 (my salary is slightly higher than her). If she goes for 12 months of elternzeit, then is it better if we change our tax classes & which & when?

2. If I change my job and we move with in Germany during elternzeit, will we be still eligible to receive elterngeld?

3. And if in case, we move out of Germany (we both have German citizenship), will we be still eligible to receive elterngeld?

Thanks.

I would appreciate some reply to the above. Thanks.

>>1. We both have tax class 4 (my salary is slightly higher than her). If she goes for 12 months of elternzeit, then is it better if we change our tax classes & which & when?

Change hers to 3 and yours to 5. That way she gets more elterngeld. Its a temporary loss for you when you move to 5 but you can get it back when you do the taxreturns.

>>2. If I change my job and we move with in Germany during elternzeit, will we be still eligible to receive elterngeld?

Yes.

>>3. And if in case, we move out of Germany (we both have German citizenship), will we be still eligible to receive elterngeld?

If you move permenantly, i dont know how it works. But once the elterngeld starts coming it will only stop after the eligible period lapses. So maybe it will not be aproblem. But you may have problem with Kindergeld.

Raj - thanks for your reply. Further to the discussion above, both my wife & I kept our tax classes to 4 as suggested by our tax consultant - because for her it would have been illegal to change our tax classes to 3 & 5 in order to get more elterngeld. But someone told me recently that my wife could change it to 3 to get more elterngeld (as you had also suggested) without any problem. The following link also says something about it-
http://www.finanztip.de/recht/steuerrecht/elterngeld.htm

especially paragraph - Steuerklasse wechseln für höheres Elterngeld - if I have understood it correctly. But anyway now it is too late for us. Perhaps others will find this discussion useful.

Now the amount of Eltergeld for my wife is decided, which she is already receiving for the last 5 months and will receive for another 7 months. Shall I now change my tax class from 4 to 3 in order to get more netto? Something about this is also mentioned in the link above (same paragraph).

For me, it is a question about money in the pocket now or later. if you change to class 3 now, you will get more money NOW but you may have to pay the money back when you do the tax declaration next year.

It was post in Forum also (vakalat):

Change of tax class to get more Eltergeld is not illegal!

http://www.trust7.com/en/foren/faq_and_important_links/elterngeld