Household, Rent and Income

By the end of this chapter you will be able to follow the three inputs of the Wohngeld formula — the number of household members, the rent M and the income Y — from the family’s facts to the sections that turn them into numbers.

1. The question

The Vogts’ payslip says €2,240 gross a month. Their tenancy agreement says €580. The formula of § 19 WoGG uses neither number as it stands: it uses an income Y and a rent M as the Act defines them.

Predict before you read on: is the Vogts’ Y higher or lower than €2,240 — and is their M higher or lower than €580?

2. Who belongs to the household

Wohngeld is computed for a household, and the formula’s values a, b and c depend on how many members are counted. § 5 Abs. 1 WoGG defines a household member: the person entitled to claim, if the home is the centre of their life, and everyone who shares it with them as a spouse not permanently separated, a partner, a relative, a foster child or parent — or someone who lives with a member so closely that, “nach verständiger Würdigung”, a mutual will to take responsibility for each other must be assumed.

For the Vogts the case enters, for each of the four people:

• that the flat is the centre of their life (Lebensmittelpunkt);
• their relationship to Katrin, the applicant — Markus as her spouse not permanently separated, the children as relatives;
• their residence status;
• that none of them receives a benefit that would exclude them under § 7 (Chapter 7);
• that their income details are complete.

From these facts the model derives four household members, all counted. Each fact matters: section 6 removes one and shows the household change.

The phrase “nach verständiger Würdigung” — on a reasonable assessment — is the Act leaving a judgment to the authority. The model does not guess it: when a case needs that judgment, the answer asks the Wohngeldbehörde (Chapter 6). The Vogts are married, so the question does not arise.

3. The income: from €2,240 to €1,710

The Act counts income in four steps, each in its own section:

§ 16 is worth reading in German, because it is the step people get wrong:

Bei der Ermittlung des Jahreseinkommens sind von dem Betrag, der sich nach den §§ 14 und 15 ergibt, jeweils 10 Prozent abzuziehen, wenn zu erwarten ist, dass im Bewilligungszeitraum die folgenden Steuern und Pflichtbeiträge zu leisten sind: 1. Steuern vom Einkommen, 2. Pflichtbeiträge zur gesetzlichen Kranken- und Pflegeversicherung, 3. Pflichtbeiträge zur gesetzlichen Rentenversicherung.

In English: from the annual income, deduct 10 % for each of the three — income tax, statutory health and care insurance, statutory pension insurance — that is expected to be paid during the grant period. Not the actual tax and contributions: flat rates of 10 %. The case records, for each member, which of the three apply; for Katrin, the second and third.

The ministry’s example writes the same calculation in one line: (€2,240 − €102.50) × 0.8 = €1,710.00, where €102.50 is the monthly share of the €1,230 flat rate. The model reaches €1,710.00 in the steps above and establishes it.

4. The rent: from €580 to €777.80

The rent the formula uses is built in three steps.

The rent under § 9. The agreed payment for the use of the home, including service charges, minus what the Act leaves aside — above all the costs of heating and hot water (§ 9 Abs. 2 WoGG with § 6 WoGV). The Vogts’ €580 is already a Bruttokaltmiete: service charges in, heating out. The case declares that the rent details are complete, so nothing further is deducted: the rent under § 9 is €580.

The ceiling. § 11 Abs. 1 WoGG takes the rent only up to a ceiling: the Höchstbetrag of Anlage 1 for the number of members and the rent level, plus a Klimakomponente — a climate component — from § 12 Abs. 7. The rent level comes from the place, not from an input: the WoGV’s list puts the town of Weimar at Mietenstufe III. For four members at level III in 2025, the ceiling is €766, the climate component €34.40: together €800.40. The Vogts’ €580 is below it, so all of it counts.

The heating relief. § 12 Abs. 6 adds a fixed amount for heating, whatever the actual heating bill: for four members, €25.80 for the carbon price and €172 as a permanent heating component, €197.80 in all.

So M = €580 + €197.80 = €777.80, established. That answers the second half of the prediction: M is higher than the rent, because the Act adds heating relief that the agreed rent does not contain.

5. Two answers to the prediction

Y is lower than the payslip — by the flat-rate expenses and two 10 % deductions. M is higher than the rent — by the heating relief.

6. Change one thing

Income tax becomes due. Suppose Katrin’s income tax were also expected in the grant period. § 16 would then deduct 10 % three times instead of twice: €25,650 × 0.7 = €17,955 a year, €1,496.25 a month. Y falls by €213.75 to €1,496.25, and the Wohngeld rises from €485 to €542 — both values from a run of the model.

Markus’s life centre is not established. Remove the fact that the flat is the centre of Markus’s life — not a finding that he lives elsewhere, just a fact the file no longer contains. § 5 Abs. 1 makes that fact a condition of membership, so the model no longer counts him — and the case changes in three places at once. The household has three members, so Anlage 2 gives other values of a, b and c, and the rent taken into account uses the components for three: €580 + €170.20 = €750.20. With Markus not counted, the household the model sees is Katrin living alone with her children, so § 17 Nr. 3 gives the single-parent allowance of €1,320 a year: Y = (€20,520 − €1,320) ÷ 12 = €1,600.00. The model then computes €351 — the answer for a mother living alone with two children, which is not the Vogts’ situation if Markus does live there. One fact, and the model follows every section it touches; and it does not flag that a fact about Markus is missing. So €351 is the result of an incomplete file, not an answer to give the family: until the household’s composition is established, it must not be sent to them. Whether Markus lives in the flat is the caseworker’s question to settle, and the answer moves the amount by €134. (The single-parent allowance also has conditions of its own in § 17 Nr. 3; the case’s facts about the children meet them.)

7. What this gives the authority

A caseworker sees the household, the rent and the income as the Act defines them, each with its section and each with the facts it rests on. A missing premise the model checks — the place, the rent, a member’s status under § 7, an income detail — appears as a missing fact, not as a silent zero or a silent default; a fact that decides who belongs to the household must be settled first (section 6). When the household disputes a number — “why €1,710 when I earn €2,240?” — the answer is already in the file, step by step.

8. Run it

law ask <case package> --case Familie2025 --query-json queries/einkommen-1710.json
law ask <case package> --case Familie2025 --query-json queries/miete-777-80.json

The first asks whether the monthly assessed income is €1,710.00, the second whether the rent taken into account is €777.80. Both were established on 12 October 2026 with law 0.1.12, and so they are on 31 December 2024 (--case Familie20241231).

Exercise

1. Using the table in section 3, what would Y be if Katrin had proven work expenses of €2,000 a year instead of using the flat rate?
2. The Vogts move to a flat in the same town for €850 a month, without heating. What is M in 2025?
3. Why does the model not assume that a person registered at the address is a household member?