Hello together!
Partial rant, but mainly a request for advice.
I'll admit to being lazy (and potentially naive/stupid) in that I've never done a tax return here. Everything gets taken out of my wages PAYE and although I've heard that doing a tax return pays for itself in terms of what you get back from "overpayments", frankly it's all hoops to jump through and I'm barely organised enough to do my GB tax return in my native language without opening up a world of pain in German.
Anyway: I'm PAYE, mrs g has a mini-job, we get Kindergelt for mini-grampus. Our lot is a simple one, or so we thought.
Returned home today to a letter from the Finanzamt, containing a questionnaire regarding our house back in GB. How they even have this on their radar, I've no idea.
Background to grampus Towers:
We rent it out via an agent. It was (is) our family home before moving to Germany and we (okay, me) wanted to keep it as a small investment / contingency plan in case everything went pear-shaped here. Bit laughable, really. It's a two-up, two-down end terrace. It's not Millionaires' Row.
We barely break even on it, indeed have subsidised it for short periods when it's lain empty. Basically it's not in a lucrative area for rent, so what the market will stand is enough to cover interest repayments and insurance and that's it. We're not raking in profit: it's all declared to the British taxman and it's well within the basic rate allowance. Payment goes from tenant to agent Agent takes fee (and sometimes repair costs and/or finder's fees) and pays remainder into my GB bank Mortgage gets paid from the same GB bank to the building society Earlier this year, I transfered some money from my DE bank to my GB bank in order to make a capital repayment to the building society. But no money gets transfered the other way (GB->DE) and everything is declared to GB taxman... ...and is next to nothing anyway, under the basic rate allowance
My naive question after that long story is: what has all this got to do with the DE-Finanzamt? I get taxed on my earnings here PAYE. What has my "not-for-profit" house in GB and taxed in GB got to do with DE, especially since the lack-of-profit remains in GB? Have any other TTers had to fill in such a questionnaire? How much of an ass-pounding am I in for here?
Now bracing myself... and... Send...
