Smaug

  Oh yes, I missed that! :-)  I assumed they were really married.

[content deleted, as post was misunderstood].

  I don't know much about the tax treaty between the US and Germany, except that it is a flipping nightmare compared to the typical ones between other nations. Won't PWC handle your taxes, if you and your husband are filing jointly? They should know how to do it.

  This part caught my eye: An 81-year old pensioner is supposed to support his children's families with his pension?

  Can you clarify that? Did the eviction actually take place and then the court ruled you had to take them back if the promised they were going to pay the rent in time?    

Assuming you are married and your spouse has no income your take home pay will be 55,000 a year, so you'd have about 39k to live on after rent. In my opinion that's enough to live comfortably in Munich.   Germany tends to be cheaper than the UK when it comes to groceries, eating out, enterntainment, etc. Even Munich is not that expensive once you've taken the rent out of the equation. My money certainly flows out a lot faster when I am in the UK than when I am in Germany.    

  I tried it in the past and it never worked for me. They'd just flat out refuse to give me as good of a deal as they gave new customers. I used to end up having to terminate the contract and start a new one to get the better rates.   Now, I have two separate contracts for two separate properties: unitymedia and Pyür. I just have relatively low speeds contracted to keep the costs down. Unitymedia is very persistent in trying to move me to a more expensive plan--they must've rung me a hundred times over three years. I just refuse. I only pay 20 euros a month and the internet connection, even though it's the slowest they offer in my building, is absolutely fine. I don't need 100 gazillion bits per second.

  If baker apprentices are required to design their own sandwiches, why on earth do most of the sandwiches sold in German bakeries look like they were designed in the 1930s?     

  I presume that’s because someone who hasn’t been a Portugiese resident previously can pay zero taxes on non-Portuguese income for ten years. I wonder how many millions she’s saving.   Portugal is a really nice country, but France, Spain and Italy are just more fun. 

  I'd rather have her noodle dish.    

  In my humble opinion, when it doesn't feel right any more.   My newest mattress is about 2 or 3 years old. My old one had stood me in good stead for about 17 years. It was top notch quality and I didn't think it needed replacing but my mom nagged me your years, claiming that it was in "very bad shape". I eventually gave in, mostly because she offered to pay for the new one (and she did!).

  So, yay, British economy! Go get'em!  

In your case, I'd just get a German accountant to get that sorted for you. I know I couldn't work it out myself.   I started letting my flat about two years ago and I know that my accountant deducted at least some of the purchasing costs that I had incurred into 14 years earlier, like the notary costs. I never had to pay interest on the property, so I don't know how that would work, i.e. if you can only deduct  the interest you pay while the flat is rented out, or the total interest.   I don't see why you'd have to file tax returns from 2015 to 2017 if you had no income. If there are any costs from those years relevant to the 2018 declaration, i'd think you can just include them in 2018.

And just to put things into perspective: UK GDP (2016):   £2.62 trillion UK food and drink industry (2017): £22 billion Expected yearly exports of pork to Taiwan: £10 million (basically the cost of a decent house in Kensington or Chelsea)   That gives us: UK food and drink industry as a percentage of GDP: 0.8% Expected revenues from sales of pork to Taiwan as a percentage of GDP: 0.0004%   I still remember Facebook being flooded with Brexiteer propaganda before the referendum claiming that the impact of Brexit on the city of London's financial industry would be negligible because it "only" represented 1% of the total UK GDP. 

Sell pigs to Taiwan instead of Nissans to the EU