Basic information about 3% tax donation

In the following article, you will find a brief overview of the 3% tax – who can donate, how to proceed, deadlines, and other important information.In the following article, you will find a brief overview of the 3% tax – who can donate, how to proceed, deadlines, and other important information.

Who can donate up to 3% of their taxes

Only those who have worked at least 40 hours as volunteers in 2025 within the meaning of the Volunteer Act can donate 3% of their income tax. Volunteer work must be documented by a written confirmation issued by the recipient of the volunteer activity or the organization that organized the entire activity. The written confirmation must then be attached to the tax return, otherwise the tax office will not accept the request and will only allow 2% of the tax to be donated to the selected non-profit organization.

Anyone who volunteered for at least 40 hours last year can donate 3% of their income tax to a selected non-profit organization from the Notary Central Register of Designated Legal Entities. The register of recipients is administered by the Notary Chamber of the Slovak Republic, and the list is updated every year by January 15, meaning that it currently includes all non-profit organizations to which 2% or 3% of paid tax can be donated.

In addition, anyone who had a tax liability for the previous year can transfer part of their tax to their parent or parents. Those who decide to transfer a portion of their paid tax to only one parent can transfer 2% of their paid tax to that parent. If you transfer the tax to both parents, each of them can receive 2% of the tax paid. This means that a voluntarily active person can transfer up to 7% of the income tax they paid in 2025.

How to proceed when filing a tax return

A citizen who submits a personal income tax return (hereinafter referred to as "tax return") and would like to send part of their paid tax to a selected non-profit organization must complete a declaration on the allocation of a portion of the personal income tax paid, which is part of the tax return. This declaration can be found in Part VIII of the Type A return and in Part XII of the Type B return.

Citizens are required to submit their 2025 tax returns by March 31, 2026, at the latest, unless they extend the deadline for filing their tax returns to June 30, 2026, or September 30, 2026. At the same time, the tax reported in the tax return must be paid by this date to avoid incurring a tax debt. A mandatory attachment to the tax return is also a confirmation of volunteer work in the case of a 3% tax donation to a non-profit organization.

Of course, the transfer of 3% of the tax is not mandatory. Those who do not want to allocate any of their taxes to their parents, or a non-profit organization should mark the box "I do not apply the procedure under Section 50 of the Act" with an X on their tax return.

If a citizen's annual tax return for 2025 is processed by their employer that citizen may send part of their paid tax to a selected non-profit organization using the prescribed form – Declaration on the transfer of a portion of personal income tax. A mandatory attachment to the declaration is a confirmation of payment of income tax from dependent activity issued by the employer who performed the annual tax settlement and a confirmation of volunteer work in the case of a 3% tax transfer. The deadline for submitting this declaration to the relevant tax administrator (tax office) is April 30, 2026.

Time frame and debts

In the case of a 3% tax allocation, an amount not exceeding €5 is not considered a tax debt. This means that when submitting a tax return by March 31, 2026, the taxpayer must not have a debt exceeding €5 as of April 16, 2026. If, on the 16th day after the deadline for submitting the tax return, the taxpayer has a tax debt exceeding €5, the tax administrator will not transfer 2% or 3% of the tax collected to the non-profit organization. For cashless transactions from a bank account, the date of payment is considered to be the date on which the payment was debited from the citizen's account.

Since all banks are now required to offer instant payments as a basic service for bank accounts, the payment is normally credited to the tax office's account at the moment it is debited from the account. This means that even a transfer made on April 16 will be accepted as fulfilling the condition for the transfer of two or three percent of the tax.

Processing and notification

Once the legal requirements have been met, the tax administrator is obliged to transfer part of the tax collected to the recipient's account within three months of the deadline for submitting the declaration. The recipient (non-profit organization) also receives a list from the tax office of people who have donated part of their tax to it.

Deadlines for transferring funds to recipients

The tax administrator is obliged to transfer part of the tax paid from the citizen's tax return for 2025 to the recipient's account by June 30, 2026, provided that the tax return for 2025 is submitted by March 31, 2026. Another deadline is September 30, 2026, provided that the income tax return for 2025 is submitted within the extended deadline of June 30, 2026. If a citizen submits a tax return within the extended deadline of September 30, 2025, the tax administrator will send the funds to non-profit organizations by December 31, 2026.

Requirements for transfer

The tax administrator will transfer part of the tax paid to the recipient specified in the declaration, provided that the following requirements are met

• the taxpayer does not have a tax debt exceeding €5 within fifteen days after the deadline for submitting the return
• the taxpayer for whom the employer has performed an annual withholding tax settlement shall provide confirmation from that employer that the tax has actually been withheld or if the taxpayer settles the tax debt in full within the deadline for submitting the declaration and the employer issues a confirmation based on the employee's request, which will be attached to the declaration
• the non-profit organization to which the tax percentage is to be paid is listed as of December 31, 2025, in the central register of recipients maintained by the Notary Chamber of the Slovak Republic in accordance with the Act on Notaries and Notarial Activities of the Notarial Code.

Correction of errors

In practice, it may happen that the submitted declaration contains incorrect information about the recipient. In such a case, the entitlement to transfer the amount corresponding to the portion of the tax paid expires. This error cannot be corrected retrospectively, so it is important that everyone carefully checks the information in the declaration.

If a legal entity - recipient of two or three percent of the tax - has met all the requirements for obtaining a portion of the tax paid, but these funds have not actually been paid, for example due to a technical error on the part of the tax authorities or the Notary Chamber of the Slovak Republic, the tax administrator will automatically pay these funds additionally, i.e. even after the set deadline.

Practical situations and how to solve them