Doppelte Haushaltführung / Living partially abroad while working in Germany

[PumbaMunich 871]

Hello everyone,

 

say someone is working and living in Germany, as with many jobs this is a home office based full time contract (full time regular employment). 

 

Due to personal circumstances, Employee needs to move his family (wife and kids) to a non-EU country. The family will live there and the employee will keep going back and forth to remain taxable in Germany and fulfill the work contract's clause that he needs to remain fully taxable in Germany.

 

Since the family of said employee will be living in the non-EU country, and in this non-EU country the employee will make sure to rent an apartment that has enough rooms for a dedicated home office so he can work from there, can he claim the second apartment as Doppelte Haushaltführung? if yes, which costs can be claimed? is it a pauschal of 1000 per month? or just part of rent/nebenkosten and back and forth flight tickets considered? what about the health insurance fees for his family in the non-EU country and school fees? or part of this goes in the "außergewohnliche werbunskosten" ?

 

This article: https://www.anwalt.org/doppelte-haushaltsfuehrung/ mentions that if the main living point is in the foreign country then it should be doable (if I did not misunderstand), but if it's the main living point, how will this affect the taxes?

 

Since the employee has kids, will they still get the Kindergeld? or will he only then benefit from Kinderfreibetrag and claim costs as money spent on dependants living in a foreign country?

 

The move is urgent, the monthly budget required will be around 2000 euro a month, some claim to those costs in the steuererklärung wouldbe of course very beneficial so the employee doesn't have to live paycheck to paycheck...

 

All above parties have the German citizenship. 

 

Thanks in advance for any tips and information!