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For personal taxes, I just fill out the form. It's around a dozen pages including all the enclosures (Anlage N etc). Pretty easy, I don't know why you'd need an

For personal taxes, I just fill out the form. It's around a dozen pages including all the enclosures (Anlage N etc). Pretty easy, I don't know why you'd need an advisor or even a fancy software package for that. No idea about corporate taxes though.

rglullis 11y ago
> I don't know why you'd need an advisor. Two cases that come directly to mind: - Moved to Germany in 2013, worked only 2 months in the end of the year. Tax was collected directly from my employer. Brutto salary in the year was obviously less than the minimum. So I imagined I could get a full refund. Talked with some of my colleagues, none of them would give me any other advice except "You need to get a Steuerberater". Talked with closer friends, and even the German ones had difficulty to figure out what to fill in order to get all of the taxes paid. - 2015 I started working as a consultant. That's when I finally went to a Steuerberater, and to my surprise, the Finanzamt never got my Steuernummer. So how is a foreigner supposed to even know how to fix that?
- lorenzhs 11y ago
  Right, being a foreigner might make it a bit more difficult, I didn't consider that. About your first point, I'd have assumed that putting the total amount you earned that year in the income box on Anlage N would suffice? When you start freelancing as a consultant then it's probably a good idea to consult a Steuerberater, yeah.
  - rglullis 11y ago
    See, looks like you could use a Steuerberater, as well. I also initially thought "Oh, I will just indicate the income of the year", but it turns out that the Elster website showed I would get ~2500€ returned. I was expecting at least 3000€, so I didn't file that. When I went to the Steuerberaterin, I managed to get almost 4500€ back. Was it good to have the help from her? Sure. But that cost me about 200€, plenty of time and also me having to get involved a lot in the process of solving the simple issue of "I need to be an expert in the tax code just to get my money back from the Government". If my only choices are between Germany's "complicated in order to keep humans involved and costly" vs the American "complicated to keep tax software companies around, but not so costly", I'd actually take the American model.

rglullis 11y ago

> I don't know why you'd need an advisor. Two cases that come directly to mind: - Moved to Germany in 2013, worked only 2 months in the end of the year. Tax was collected directly from my employer. Brutto salary in the year was obviously less than the minimum. So I imagined I could get a full refund. Talked with some of my colleagues, none of them would give me any other advice except "You need to get a Steuerberater". Talked with closer friends, and even the German ones had difficulty to figure out what to fill in order to get all of the taxes paid. - 2015 I started working as a consultant. That's when I finally went to a Steuerberater, and to my surprise, the Finanzamt never got my Steuernummer. So how is a foreigner supposed to even know how to fix that?

lorenzhs 11y ago
Right, being a foreigner might make it a bit more difficult, I didn't consider that. About your first point, I'd have assumed that putting the total amount you earned that year in the income box on Anlage N would suffice? When you start freelancing as a consultant then it's probably a good idea to consult a Steuerberater, yeah.
- rglullis 11y ago
  See, looks like you could use a Steuerberater, as well. I also initially thought "Oh, I will just indicate the income of the year", but it turns out that the Elster website showed I would get ~2500€ returned. I was expecting at least 3000€, so I didn't file that. When I went to the Steuerberaterin, I managed to get almost 4500€ back. Was it good to have the help from her? Sure. But that cost me about 200€, plenty of time and also me having to get involved a lot in the process of solving the simple issue of "I need to be an expert in the tax code just to get my money back from the Government". If my only choices are between Germany's "complicated in order to keep humans involved and costly" vs the American "complicated to keep tax software companies around, but not so costly", I'd actually take the American model.