> how do you suddenly get a "tax bill" from the Austrian government for 15k Euro? You may be mixing unrelated facts. The academic was trying to help his friend

> how do you suddenly get a "tax bill" from the Austrian government for 15k Euro? You may be mixing unrelated facts. The academic was trying to help his friend "cover a cashflow problem", no more specifics. The bank asked to see the friend's tax bill, but also correspondance with their accountant. The article does not say why the bank asked for these. They could be asking purely to confirm the friend's identity. Nonetheless, you could get an out-of-nowhere €15k tax bill from Austria, if a family member died and bequeathed you a house worth €700k, as the Grunderwerbsteuergesetz will make you immediately liable for €15,000 (first €250,000 @ 0.5% = €1,250, next €150,000 @ 2% = €3,000, final €307,143 @ 3.5% = €10,750). You'd probably want to keep such a house rather than sell it immediately to meet the comparatively small tax demand, so if a friend can solve your cashflow problem, it's much better all round. https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=6edcfe00-26cb-4898-ba74-7156f7a4fecd https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=6edcfe00-26cb... Personally, if my friend was having a hard time and I were to gift them money, and the bank demanded proof of my friend's hardship, not just remind me to double-check I'm not being scammed, and validate that I had the correct destination bank account... I'd also tell them to fuck off and then change banks. They do have to report high value transfers to the government, but that's then for the taxman or police to ask me directly why I moved the money; not the bank, and not for determining if I'm being scammed or not. You don't need to write "Edinburgh academic" in quotes, John MacInnes really is an Edinburgh academic: https://static.sps.ed.ac.uk/q-step/about_us/people/macinnes_john.html https://static.sps.ed.ac.uk/q-step/about_us/people/macinnes_...