Dembo

OTOH millions of car owners resent that tax payers money is going to subsidise train fares. Which is a not unreasonable point of view, especially for those that live somewhere with a few busses a day.

It was always possible to use it on the ICs from Stuttgart to Singen. But they're not very express - although the new ICs are pretty nice. I guess you mean this ("ab Freitag"): https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/regional/brandenburg/rbb-deutschlandticket-gilt-fortan-auch-fuer-einzelne-fernzuege-in-brandenburg-100.html I've been doing a few Saturday days out to see local towns I've never been to thanks to the train travel being "free". Enjoy it whilst it lasts: Even if it isn't scrapped due to the current budget hole I have a feeling the next government will be a CDU-AfD coalition.

I also have everything (including electricity) included in a flat fee. There's something vague about excessive usage but as there are no meters for the individual flats I don't know how anybody would know. We had 28 degrees in Stuttgart on Friday. Is that the reason you had no heating? Perhaps if the thermostat is somewhere that retains the heat it wouldn't switch the heating on and you on the ground floor suffer. I have a cheapo digital thermometer with bluetooth and an app that can display the temperature fluctuations over many weeks. Perhaps get one of those.

Thanks for the reply. I don't know why I didn't think of it but I actually have a SIPP with Hargreaves Lansdown which means I'm an existing customer and it looks like I may even be able to do this online. We'll see how that goes.

Anyone else in this situation? I have L&G UK Stocks and shares ISAs (about 50K GBP) that I originally opened in 2007 and that I haven't touched in my time in Germany. Last year (or the year before perhaps) they announced they were selling off the business but overseas residents weren't included. I guess the writing was on the wall as today I have a letter saying they're now closing the account completely on 4. March 2024. The options are: 1. find someone else in the UK to manage it. 2. Take the cash. 3. Give it all to charity. As I understood it if I ever moved back permanently to the UK I could have withdrawn the cash tax free (as it's an ISA), but doing so in Germany would mean paying capital gains tax on years of gains (and a lot of complicated calculations for my tax advisor). Option 1 would work around this, but sounds like it might be difficult and maybe there isn't even anyone that would want to take it on - overseas client and all. Plus if I never go back to the UK I'll end up paying the tax at some point and I'm only kicking the can down the road. For taking the money I need to provide a recent back statement from my German account (would have been easier if Barclays hadn't closed my UK account). Of course it's all online so this could be a little tricky. Option 3 - Somehow even if I did that I don't think it'd get me out of the German tax liability - oder? It occurs to me that the smart thing to do would be to take half of it in this year and then half in the next. Actually the smart thing to do is go back in time to 2019 and take all the cash out whilst still tax resident in the UK. Any thoughts?

Yaay I can post again. Thankyou kiplette. Now if only I had something to say.