BFH: pilotage district is no large-area Betriebsstätte for self-employed

Self-employed taxpayers who have no travel-law Betriebsstätte deduct the cost of driving from home to each assignment in fullBundesfinanzhof. Only journeys between the home and a Betriebsstätte fall under the deduction cap of § 4 Abs. 5 Satz 1 Nr. 6 EStGBundesfinanzhof, which limits the deduction to the Entfernungspauschale. The Bundesfinanzhof applied that distinction to a self-employed sea pilot (Seelotse) for the dispute years 2014 to 2016Bundesfinanzhof and, in doing so, changed its case lawBundesfinanzhof: a pilot's pilotage district (Lotsrevier) or district section (Lotsbezirk) is no longer a large-area (großräumige) BetriebsstätteBundesfinanzhof.

A Betriebsstätte for travel-expense purposes still requires a fixed, permanent business facility (ortsfeste dauerhafte betriebliche Einrichtung) that the taxpayer visits not merely occasionally but with a degree of permanence — continuously and repeatedly — in order to perform professional activity there. That requires identifying the fixed local centre of the permanently structured activity (ortsgebundener Mittelpunkt der dauerhaft angelegten Tätigkeit). Performing only auxiliary or incidental tasks at a location is not enough. The court confirmed that this provision-specific reading of the term survives the 2013 reform of employee travel-expense law (Gesetz zur Änderung und Vereinfachung der Unternehmensbesteuerung und des steuerlichen Reisekostenrechts vom 20.02.2013), expressly joining the III. Senat's judgment of 5 February 2026 (III R 18/25). The decisive reason is that § 4 Abs. 5 Satz 1 Nr. 6 EStG contains no cross-reference to the employee rules on a large-area first place of work (erste Tätigkeitsstätte, § 9 Abs. 1 Satz 3 Nr. 4 Satz 1 EStG) or a wide-area field of activity (§ 9 Abs. 1 Satz 3 Nr. 4a Satz 3 und 4 EStG): the legislature thereby expressed, in the court's view, that the area-based aggregation developed for employees does not apply to self-employed profit calculators.

Applied to the pilot, none of the candidate locations qualifiedBundesfinanzhof. The rented permanent parking space near the pier, though the spot he drove to most often, served only as a stopover; he performed no professional activity beyond travel there. The Lotsenstation A, seat of the Lotsenbrüderschaft to which he belonged, was not visited at all during the dispute period — drives there merely led to a taxi onward to K (so-called Ausgleichsfahrten). The Lotsenstation K saw the pilot's waiting periods between pilotages, and the Radarstation K his radar duty — two days a month for four hours each — but that work did not form the centre of a Fahrlotse's activity, which is the piloting of vessels itself; moreover the pilot reached K only exceptionally. The vessels to be piloted are likewise not Betriebsstätten, a point the court reaffirmed from its 2014 judgment (VIII R 33/10).

The consequences follow directly. The pilot's journeys from home to the individual assignments are deductible in full as Betriebsausgaben under § 4 Abs. 4 EStGBundesfinanzhof, and his meal allowances (Verpflegungsmehraufwendungen) are deductible in full under § 4 Abs. 5 Satz 1 Nr. 5 Satz 1 und 2 EStG in conjunction with § 9 Abs. 4a EStGBundesfinanzhof, because the same standard governs: the Tätigkeitsmittelpunkt of the meal-allowance rule corresponds to the Betriebsstätte of the travel-cost rule. The Finanzamt's revision against the Niedersächsisches Finanzgericht judgment of 22 May 2024 (8 K 74/22) was rejected as unfoundedBundesfinanzhof; the amounts themselves were undisputed. future business-income assessments for self-employed clients in territory-based professions with no fixed establishment follow the same test: without a qualifying fixed facility there is no deduction cap to apply.

Legal basis: EStG § 4 Abs. 4, § 4 Abs. 5 Satz 1 Nr. 5 und 6, § 9 Abs. 4a; BFH judgment of 23 June 2026, VIII R 13/24Bundesfinanzhof.