Please help, any advise welcome

[jonyjackles]

Hi,

I bought a property in Germany in 2008 for 27000 euros, i was conned!!! i was 19 at the time and thought i knew it all, oh and if you come across someone named < snip> RUN, he is a deceitful, money hungry liar, ok so i sold the property last year for 12000 euros, today i received a letter from what i think is the inland revenue of Germany asking me to pay income tax!!! whilst i owned the property i did not receive any rent because, apparently, the rent payed by the tenants was just about enough to pay for the bills, on some occasions i had to send money to my agent as the rent was not enough!! i sold at a huge loss!!! i am 24 and in so much debt because of this!!!! i do not know what to do!! will the germans send bailiffs to my house if i do not pay? are they able to prosecute me? should i be paying any income tax at all since i did not make any money, so effectively, there was NO income?! i am tempted to send the letter back with a note saying that they have the wrong address and the person the letter is addressed does not live here, is that a bad idea? will they come looking for me? i don't know what to do!!! please help me, i'm so stressed because of all this, i'm begging you!!!

Jony J

 

[kap-C]

Hi Jony,

I am very sorry to hear about your bad experience. I am sure you will have learned a few very valuable lessons from this! Don't beat yourself up too much though, everybody makes mistakes and some bad choices in life.

First of all, may I recommend that you remove the name of your "business associate" in Germany from your initial posting. While I can fully understand your anger and frustration, this could have some serious legal implications for you and is probably in breach of the Terms of Use of this forum (I am not sure, I haven't read them).

As to your actual question - you should never ignore correspondence from authorities. If you have rental income in Germany you are required to make annual tax returns in Germany. Going by what you stated in your post - losses on the rental income and a loss on the sale of the property - you will not have any tax liability (i.e. you will not have to pay tax). But you will have to make a return!

If you don't make a tax return, the tax authority will estimate your income and assess the tax on basis of this estimate. These estimates are usually substantially higher than the actual income. If you do not pay your income tax, I can imagine that it is quite likely that German authorities will be able to establish a claim through the courts in the UK. Whether or not they will actually do this is another thing ... However, I would strongly recommend that you get your affairs in order!

If you want you can send me a PM or, if you are not able to do this, you can contact me through <snip> I can help you to figure out what the corresponce is actually about and I can put you in touch with a German tax consultant, who can assist you in sorting out your tax affairs (if this should be necessary).

 

[kap-C]

Okay. I was advised that I am not allowed to refer you to my website. That is okay. You will have to have a few more posts (I think the number is 5) before you can send/receive PMs. Once you have reached the "Active Member" level, you will then be able to contact me by PM.