Berlin tax office takes a long time for binding rulings
🇩🇪 Auf deutsch:
Berliner Finanzamt braucht lange für verbindliche Auskunft
Again, no experience report here, but rather a second-hand data point that I heard during one of my many conversations with tax advisors.
Some tax advisors have the strategy of obtaining a so-called "binding ruling" from the tax office beforehand for their planned complex structure for the "structuring" of the German exit tax. This means that one submits an inquiry to the tax office describing the structure (e.g. Liechtenstein Foundation - Article here). The tax office responds to this and must then adhere to this assessment. So if the tax office essentially "waves through" the structure, it cannot change its opinion later when the structure is ultimately implemented in that way.
(As a side note, it seems to be the case that only the tax advisors with extremely high hourly rates want to obtain these binding rulings, although strictly speaking they are not necessary (here, too, different tax advisors apparently have very different opinions))
However, with the Berlin tax office, according to this tax advisor, there seems to be the problem that it takes an extremely long time to answer. Response times of 6 - 9 months are not unusual. This is of course quite problematic if, as a business owner, one had actually planned to emigrate from Germany in the meantime.
Unfortunately, the tax advisor made no statement regarding the "strictness" of the Berlin tax office. That would have been interesting..
Some tax advisors have the strategy of obtaining a so-called "binding ruling" from the tax office beforehand for their planned complex structure for the "structuring" of the German exit tax. This means that one submits an inquiry to the tax office describing the structure (e.g. Liechtenstein Foundation - Article here). The tax office responds to this and must then adhere to this assessment. So if the tax office essentially "waves through" the structure, it cannot change its opinion later when the structure is ultimately implemented in that way.
(As a side note, it seems to be the case that only the tax advisors with extremely high hourly rates want to obtain these binding rulings, although strictly speaking they are not necessary (here, too, different tax advisors apparently have very different opinions))
However, with the Berlin tax office, according to this tax advisor, there seems to be the problem that it takes an extremely long time to answer. Response times of 6 - 9 months are not unusual. This is of course quite problematic if, as a business owner, one had actually planned to emigrate from Germany in the meantime.
Unfortunately, the tax advisor made no statement regarding the "strictness" of the Berlin tax office. That would have been interesting..
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