Tax impact from US with no tax equiliation package

My wife has relatives in Germany and we would like to move near Nuremberg for about 2 years. My job requires Europe and Asia travel and can easily accommodate me working from a home office in Germany and traveling locally by car/train. My employer supports the idea of the move and is considering helping cover house and car + misc. I will get paid and have health insurance out of the US. However, they will offer no tax equalization package. I'm concerned about the difference in tax obligations, and frankly just the complexities of filing (social security, German pension (double tax), state taxes, 401K contributions deductible from German taxes, hidden taxes, etc.) At this point I'm less concerned about many of the details and just trying to get a flavor if this will even be possible financially. If the taxes get out of control and I need to pay big difference from the US it's way out of my league, though even an extra couple of K will hurt.

Income (salary + commission) ~ $95K USD
Max 401K - 15K
Max IRA contribution for myself and wife
529 plans for 2 kids
Relatively simple/low living expenses (own both cars, max savings and investments)

Any ideas where to start even finding out if I can make this work from a Tax perspective. I own my house and will likely not rent it (mother in law will stay) so the mortgage will get painful (~2K / month) but hopefully that can be deducted against the German taxes. Anyone done the move from the US with a salary over $80K and not had a tax equalization package. Would like to have some insight. Thanks.

so you're staying on your american contract, just basically moving offices?

my suggestion, contact one of the tax consultants. i know there was some posting recently about people getting paid in pounds or CAN dollars (??), but living in Germany & asking similar things. maybe that will give you some leads?

i mean, i know if i earned over $82k a year, i would have to pay some U.S. income tax, but i am so way below that i'm not even afraid!

I second Elfenstar and recommend you contact one of the professionals who advertise here on Toytown.

I don't think you really want to trust a lot of strangers to give you financial advice that will have such an impact.

Good luck!

Thanks for the replys. I've sent out a couple of emails to experts but have not gotten a response yet. I figured if someone had some specific expereince I could at least add that to my knowledge base (at least not relying on it completely).

Unfortunately I need to move on this pretty quickly to grab the opportunity. I hope I can get some peace of mind on the finance questions soon. I'd really like to make this move but I don't want to be surprised when everyone wants a part of the paycheck!

Thanks,

You may want to take a look at the US-German tax treaty. You can find a copy in English here.

As others have said get advice from experts...

I find it hard to imagine that the German tax office would
recognise savings schemes you have in the US
and I'd be 99.9% certain that they will not allow
you to set your US mortgage off against your tax.

The House-buying support scheme here is totally different
and is being cancelled anyway...

It probably wont help you much to ask US citizens who work at
Embassy/consulate (they will be being paid from US I guess) as such
staff will have diplomatic status & that leads to different situation.

I would recommend that you contact Mark Summers http://www.toytowngermany.com/munich/mark_...s_us_taxes.html
I would also recommend that you register to vote while overseas by going to http://www.votefromabroad.org