Brandenburg is almost invisible in federal statistics on sex work. As of the reference date of December 31, 2022, according to the state evaluation by the Federal Statistical Office, 45 people were registered in the state of Brandenburg under the Prostitutes’ Protection Act (ProstSchG) – one of the lowest values nationwide. For comparison: North Rhine-Westphalia had 7,419 in the same year, Bavaria had 4,508. Nationwide, at the end of 2025, approximately 32,500 people were validly registered, 0.7 percent more than at the end of 2024 (32,300). The current breakdown by state is published annually by destatis – anyone who needs a current daily figure should check there.
These 45 say little about the actual number of people offering sexual services in Brandenburg. But they say a lot about the geography of the state: Brandenburg surrounds a city with millions of inhabitants, where most of the scene works, registers, and pays taxes. And precisely at this state border, something changes that moves more money in everyday life than any restricted zone ordinance – namely the way taxes are collected.
Two Registrations, Two Offices – and They Have Nothing to Do with Each Other
The most common misconception at the outset: Anyone who has registered under the ProstSchG is thereby also recorded for tax purposes. This is not the case. These are two separate procedures with two separate authorities that do not maintain a shared file.
The ProstSchG registration including health counseling in Brandenburg is handled by the districts and independent cities; for the prostitution business – that is, establishments – the responsible bodies are offices, district-free municipalities, and independent cities. We have broken down how this works in detail, what documents to bring, and which office is responsible for which district in our overview of the registration procedure in the state of Brandenburg.
The tax side begins independently at the tax office: with the questionnaire for tax registration, which is submitted via ELSTER. The result is a tax number. The responsible office is generally the tax office of your place of residence – Brandenburg has 13 tax offices, and the assignment is determined by your home address.
One point that repeatedly causes uncertainty: A business license is not required for personal sex work according to prevailing legal opinion. The independent pursuit of sex work is not considered a registrable trade under § 14 GewO in trade law; the establishments are required to register, not the person providing the service. For tax purposes, however, income from a trade business under § 15 EStG applies – the Federal Tax Court has abandoned its decades-old classification as „other income.“ No business office, but subject to business tax in principle: This combination seems contradictory, but it is the law as it stands.
Why Nobody in Brandenburg Withholds a Daily Rate
In Berlin, North Rhine-Westphalia, Baden-Württemberg, Hesse, Rhineland-Palatinate, Saarland, and Saxony, the tax authorities work with the so-called Düsseldorf procedure. Operators deduct a fixed amount per working day for each person working in their establishment, which is deposited as a prepayment for their income and sales tax at the tax office. The rates range from about 6 to 30 euros per working day depending on the state and municipality; Berlin is at the high end with 30 euros. The procedure has no legal basis; it is based on agreements between tax offices and establishments. The Professional Association for Sex Work (BesD) rejects it because it creates a special treatment that other self-employed people do not face.
Brandenburg does not appear in the relevant overviews of this procedure. Here – as in northern German states – standard taxation applies: You register with the tax office, estimate your profit, receive a prepayment notice if necessary, and settle the account at the end of the year via your tax return. Only your tax office can clarify this binding; if an establishment in Brandenburg asserts a daily rate against you, asking about the concrete agreement with the tax office is justified.
This has two sides. On the positive side: Nobody deducts a fixed amount from you on slow days that has nothing to do with your actual earnings. On the critical side: No sense of „that’s taken care of" arises. You have to set aside the reserves yourself – starting from the first month, not from the first tax notice.
The Commuting Case: Residence in Brandenburg, Work in Berlin
The registration certificate under the ProstSchG is valid nationwide. If you are registered in Königs Wusterhausen or Oranienburg and work in Berlin, you do not need a second registration – but tax liability does not move with you. Income tax remains with your tax office at your place of residence in Brandenburg.
If the daily rate is withheld at the Berlin establishment, this is legally not a final tax, but a prepayment toward your personal tax liability. For it to be credited in your assessment, you need receipts: Documentation of every amount remitted, with date, name, and tax number. Without these records, you may pay twice – once at the desk, once to the tax office. Have the amounts confirmed in writing, not just verbally assured.
The Three Types of Taxes – Concretely
Income Tax
Profit = income minus operating expenses, determined via income-expense accounting. For 2026, the basic exemption is 12,348 euros (2025: 12,096 euros); the top tax rate of 42 percent applies to taxable income of 69,879 euros and above. Solidarity surcharge only applies above a fixed income tax of 20,350 euros (individual assessment) – so not for most solo self-employed at all.
The tax office sets prepayments under § 37 EStG by written notice, due on the 10th of March, June, September, and December. They are only set from a certain threshold (at least 400 euros per year, 100 euros per installment). Important for highly fluctuating income: Prepayments can be adjusted during the year. If the workload drops, an informal request for reduction with a brief explanation is the fastest way to address a liquidity problem – and much better than letting deadlines pass.
Business Tax
Here Brandenburg residents benefit structurally. The exemption for individuals is 24,500 euros of business income – if you stay below this, you pay no business tax. The tax rate of the municipality where the business is located decides, not your place of residence and not the state.
Brandenburg averaged around 324 percent across 419 municipalities in 2025, with a range of about 200 to 455 percent; the state capital Potsdam now shows 470 percent, while other sources still list 455 percent. This is not a minor detail: Up to a tax rate of 400 percent, business tax is practically fully credited against income tax under § 35 EStG; above that, a remainder sticks. Because tax rates are set per municipality and can change annually, the current rate must always be inquired from the respective municipality. In many smaller Brandenburg municipalities, it is noticeably lower than the rates in large cities.
Where your business location can be at all is not a tax question but one of building and administrative law – and in Brandenburg this determines the location more than any restricted zone ordinance. Why building law draws the real boundary we have addressed separately; tax-wise, in the end, it comes down to the location you can legally establish there.
Sales Tax
Sexual services are subject to the standard tax rate of 19 percent. The small business exemption under § 19 UStG is crucial, which has been reformulated as of 2025: It applies if your turnover in the previous year did not exceed 25,000 euros and in the current year does not exceed 100,000 euros. If you stay below these limits, you do not charge sales tax – but you also cannot deduct input tax from room rentals, advertising, or purchases. With high operating expenses, voluntarily waiving the small business exemption can be arithmetically cheaper; this is a decision you calculate once and do not make on a whim, because it is binding.
A practical point for 2026: The obligation to be able to receive electronic invoices in the domestic B2B sector has applied since January 1, 2025, to all businesses – including micro-businesses. If you rent rooms or time slots from an establishment, you will receive these invoices in structured form going forward. The obligation to issue e-invoices yourself takes effect in 2027, initially for businesses with more than 800,000 euros of previous-year turnover and from 2028 for all others; micro-business owners remain permanently exempt from issuing them. A functioning, permanently accessible email inbox for business correspondence is therefore no longer a luxury but a requirement.
Operating Expenses: the Amount Most Frequently Given Away
Deductible are expenses that are business-related – and in sex work, this is significantly more than many claim: room and daily rentals, ads and portal fees, website and photos, work clothing, hygiene and protective items, cleaning and laundry, telephone and internet proportionally, travel costs, training, account fees, tax advice. For trips between your home and business location, the standard mileage allowance applies, which in 2026 is already 38 cents per kilometer – in a large state with long distances, this is a significant line item.
The condition is always the same: documentation. A simple income journal, kept on the day of income, plus a folder or cloud storage for expense receipts is enough to start. Reconstructing after the fact loses you money and sanity. How long records must be kept was last changed by the legislature – the deadline that applies to you is best inquired directly from your tax office or tax firm.
Social Insurance: the Real Gap
Taxes cost money when you earn. Social insurance costs money even when you don’t earn – and this is the part that more often becomes a problem in practice.
Health insurance is mandatory but must be arranged yourself. In voluntary statutory health insurance, for self-employed people in 2026 there is a minimum calculation basis of 1,318.33 euros per month. Depending on the insurance company and additional contributions, this results in minimum premiums of around 260 to 278 euros per month – even in a month with no income at all. If you want sick pay, you must expressly secure it through an optional tariff; without this choice, there is no replacement income in case of illness. This is exactly where the typical chain reaction occurs: unpaid premium contributions, then suspension of benefits, then a sum that cannot be resolved alone.
Pension insurance, however, is not mandatory for self-employed sex workers – and that is why it is overlooked. Voluntary contributions are possible and in 2026 range between 112.16 euros and 1,571.70 euros per month (2025: 103.42 to 1,497.30 euros). Contributions for the previous year can still be made up until March 31 of the following year. Two arguments speak for not putting this off: To have a pension claim, you need five years of contribution history, and retirement savings contributions have been fully deductible as special expenses since 2023. If you do not want the statutory pension, you can look into a basic pension (Rürup) or private provision – the tax treatment differs.
Politically, there is movement on this: A mandatory retirement provision for the self-employed with a choice between statutory pension and private products has been announced and is being implemented in stages, but as of 2026 does not yet apply across the board to all self-employed. Until then, provision remains a voluntary decision – with the expected result that it often is not made at all.A third point concerns demarcation: anyone working in an establishment that dictates working hours, prices, and presence may not be self-employed but rather an employee in a dependent employment relationship – with full social security obligations on the part of the establishment. The ProstSchG explicitly limits the right to issue instructions to sex workers. Where reality deviates from this, a status clarification with the Deutsche Rentenversicherung (German Pension Insurance) can be worthwhile.
Controls do take place – and hit unregistered workers harder
Brandenburg maintains tax investigation offices at the tax offices Cottbus, Frankfurt (Oder) and Potsdam; since 2011, an additional specialist unit for combating VAT fraud has operated in Cottbus. Since 2016, agreements have existed for joint investigation teams with the Financial Control Black Labour division of Customs. Large-scale raids in the south of the state involving several hundred officers from Customs, Police and Tax Investigation – triggered by suspected cases of human trafficking, withholding of social contributions and tax evasion – show that the focus is on structures, not on individual self-employed persons with sloppy bookkeeping.
This leads to a sobering consequence: tax registration is the protection, not the risk. If you have a tax number, declare income, and make advance payments, you are in a completely different position during a control than someone who has declared nothing for years. And because Brandenburg knows much residential and appointment-based work rather than large establishments, your own protection depends more on your own documentation than on an establishment that remits something for you.
What to do first
- ProstSchG registration with the responsible district or independent city, including health counseling.
- Questionnaire for tax registration via ELSTER to your residential tax office; wait for your tax number.
- Make a conscious decision about the small business exemption and document it.
- Clarify health insurance before the first contribution month runs – including the question of sick pay.
- Set up a reserve account. A rough rule of thumb for getting started: a fixed percentage of each income goes immediately to a separate account, from which advance payments and contribution payments are made.
- Collect receipts from day one, record income daily.
- Calculate retirement provision once, rather than putting it off.
Where to get support
For questions about registration, health, safety and dealing with authorities, there are contact points throughout the state – individual districts such as Havelland provide their own counseling services for sex workers, while the responsible state ministry and the State Office for Occupational Safety, Consumer Protection and Health (LAVG) bundle technical information. We have compiled a separate overview of contact points and counseling services in the state. Important to know: counseling centers are not permitted to provide tax advice – this is reserved for tax advisors and wage tax assistance associations. However, they can accompany you, translate, prepare appointments, and pave the way to a firm that can handle the industry.
And to be explicit once more: assessment rates, responsibilities, and contribution rates change, and some of this is decided per municipality. Whether your specific business premises are located at a permitted location, which assessment rate applies to you, and how your tax office sets advance payments can only be answered bindingly by the responsible municipality and tax office. This text does not replace tax or legal advice – it is intended to ensure that you ask the right questions before the first notice arrives in your mailbox.