Yes, but it is different. I’m employed, so my employer pays taxes, social security, pension fund money, and health insurance into the proper channels, and I get an “after taxes” direct transfer (which is standard here for decades now).

The tax rates the employer pays are based on complicated tables which are calculated on average annual incomes and no deductions. So they are usually higher than they would be in reality.

At the beginning of the year, we get a paper from the employer stating how much taxes they have paid out of my pay over the year. Then we can take (you are not required to, but letting this slip would be stupid) tax forms and fill them out, or use a tax software (costs about €5 and contains all the legal tricks and up-to-date information). There you can claim all things that would reduce your tax load, e.g. Text benefits for education, for having a handicap, times on unemployment, change of pay rate, office supplies you need for business purposes, medical costs (which usually is not much, because we have working health insurance, but there are co-pays and things that are not covered, like something that is a big thing for us: a fixed rate per kilometer for trips to doctors and physiotherapeuts, which is a list of several pages and alone reduces our tax load by several hundred euro).

You submit this as a paper form, or, more modern, online. We usually hear back from the tax guys a few weeks later, asking for invoices and receipts, send them in, and again a few weeks later, we get money back. As we can claim a lot of stuff (my wife is handicapped), we usually get a few thousand euro back - which is a good incentive to file taxes! But even as a normal person, it pays, as there is a form “work-related costs” where people can claim money for commuting and similar things.

As a self-employed person, one has to submit taxes for the business, of course.