Notes on how to fill out Anlage V (rental expenses)
Posted: Tue Feb 27, 2024 7:50 pm
I saved some information from the old Forum where Panda gave very useful advice and I include it here. I don't know if anything has changed since she wrote this, but it's at least a small amount of her wisdom that we can read again!
How to fill in Anlage V (attach as many as you have rented out apartments/houses)
line 1: your surname
line 2: your first name; cross to the left of "zur Einkommensteuererklärung"
line 4: street name and number of the rented out apartment/house
line 4: "Angeschaft am": date when you bought it
line 5: Postleitzahl: postal code; Ort: city in which your rented out apartment/house is
line 5: "Fertig gestellt am": date your rented out apartment/house was built
After you buy the apartment/house you will get a letter called "Einheitswertbescheid" from the tax department, giving you a "Aktenzeichen" (a long string of numbers, e.g. 145/405/1234/006/034/9)
line 6: write this long number "Aktenzeichen" from the "Einheitswertbescheid"
line 7: total square metres of all your apartments, e.g. 50 if you have one, 350=150 if you 3 apartments of 50sqm each in that building
line 8: depending on the fact on which floor your apartment is, choose a columns to fill in: Erdgeschoß = ground floor; 1. Obergeschoß = 1st floor; 2. Obergeschoß = 2nd floor; weitere Geschosse: anything above that
and fill in: your rental income in that year without the costs for heat, water, etc. = cold rent = Kaltmiete
Write the total amount for all floors in field 01
line 9: Anzahl: number of your your apartments on that floor
line 9: Wohnfläche: total square metres of all your apartments on that floor
Each year the company administrating the apartment building (Hausverwaltung) will send you a "Hausgeldabrechnung" with an overview of what the heat, water, repairs cost in that year. They will also write in there which costs you can oblige your tenant to pay (heat, water, maintenace of lift, ...) and which you have to bear yourself, like that company's fee and the repair costs.
line 12, field 4:
Normally the tenant will pay an advance on these "Nebenkosten" (utility costs) to you every month together with his "cold rent". Add up all these utility cost payments your tenant made to you that year, subtract the reimbursements you made to him when he overpaid you on utilities and write the total into field 04
line 15: if you also rent out a parking space, put in the income for that year from that into field 07
line 20: add up the amounts from field 01, field 04 and field 07
line 21: forget about that for now, here you have to fill in the sum of (depreciation + interest costs + all real costs from the "Hausgeldabrechnung") which you only calculate later on, on the second page in line 50!
line 22: rental profit or loss = subtract amount in line 21 from amount in line 20
line 33: here you will put in the amount of depreciation
- if the apartment/house was built in 1924 or earlier: 2.5% of the "Pure building price"
- if the apartment/house was built in 1925 or later: 2% of the "Pure building price"
Now the calculation of the "Pure building price" is a bit complicated, but bear with me. The idea is that your apartment /house stands on some ground and that the price of the ground doesn't change the older the house gets, but that the apartment/house itself gets older and will be worth less with time.
So how does the ta department how much of the price you paid was for the ground and how much for the building standing on it?
They then subtract this "imaginary" value of the land the building stands on from your purchase price and the result is the "Pure building price".
If not possible to get this information (such as from the UK) then you can use the building as 80% of the purchase price value.
Now we get on to the calculation of the "Pure building price":
29.500 GBP Purchase price of Helen's House
300.80 GBP for legal fees
115.00 GBP for survey costs
TOTAL 29,915.80 GBP
Conversion into EUROS:
Helen's House purchased 22.06.1984 for 29.500 GBP.
House purchase 22.06.1984 29,915.80 GBP
Conversion rate is 3,7950 DM 113,530.46 DM
Conversion from DM into EURO 58,047.20 EUR
Conversion rate from GBP to DM on 22.06.1984 taken from https://www.bundesbank.de/dynamic/actio ... 1_b01011_3
Conversion rate from DM to EUR standard 1€ = 1.95583 DM
58,047.20 € real total purchase price
--> part of that for ground: 20%: 11,609.44€
--> part of that only for building: 80% = "Pure building price": 46,437.76€
Depreciation over 50 years (I assume it was built after 1924):
0.02 x 46437.76€ = 927.75€ is the yearly depreciation
line 33, column 1 and column 4: put in the amount of yearly depreciation, 927,75€
line 39, column 1 and column 4: repair cost out of "Hausgeldabrechnung"
line 46, column 1 and column 4: land tax (= Grundsteuer, between 150€ and 300€ per year), real utility and other costs from "Hausgeldabrechnung"
line 47, column 1 and column 4: fee of company administrating the building (= Hausverwaltung)
line 50: sum of all above costs in column 4
--> now copy that amount from line 50 into line 21 on the first page and calculate your rental profit or loss in line 22
Congratulations, you're done.
Don't forget to make a copy of everything (including your filled in, signed tax forms) before you send it to them by snail mail.
... I am paying off a huge renovation project from 2020 and won't ACTUALLY make any profit for another year, my UK tax returns are showing a loss for 3 years as a result. But Germany isn't interested in that.
Let me introduce you to §82 (1) EStDV, which offers an exception to the strict "only claim expenses in the year they were paid-rule of §11 (2) EStG.
It allows you to "spread" the cost of major repairs over up to 5 years.
The nice thing is that nowhere in the law do they actually define what "major" means, so there is no limit amount, i.e. you could spread even "low" repair costs over 5 years and there is nothing the Finanzamt could do about it
§82 (1) EStDV:
• 1The taxpayer may, notwithstanding section 11, subsection 2 of the Act, spread larger expenses for the maintenance of buildings which, at the time of the payment of the maintenance expense, do not belong to business assets and are predominantly used for residential purposes evenly over two to five years.2A building is predominantly used for residential purposes if the floor area of the rooms of the building used for residential purposes amounts to more than half of the total usable floor area.3 Garages belonging to the building shall be treated as serving residential purposes irrespective of their actual use, insofar as they cannot accommodate more than one passenger car for each dwelling located in the building.4Rooms for the storage of additional motor vehicles shall always be treated as not serving residential purposes.
So as to not "lose" more than 1/5 of this 2020 repair expense, I would suggest spreading it over 5 years.
Example:
You replaced the windows and repaired the roof in 2020, total cost 40,000€.
You use §82 EStDV to spread this repair cost over 5 years:
• 8,000€ expense in 2020, which are "lost" to you. But neither did you have to pay the "Brexit Progressionsvorbehalt tax" in 2020.
• 8,000€ expense in 2021
• 8,000€ expense in 2022
• 8,000€ expense in 2023
• 8,000€ expense in 2024
Basically, your situation is exactly the same as the one in the example in this commentary, where someone had forgotten to claim for 50,000€ of repair costs in the year they had them, and by using §82 (1) EStDV "saved" at least 4/5 of the expenses by spreading the repair cost over 5 years: https://www.haufe.de/personal/haufe-per ... 94508.html
How to fill in Anlage V (attach as many as you have rented out apartments/houses)
line 1: your surname
line 2: your first name; cross to the left of "zur Einkommensteuererklärung"
line 4: street name and number of the rented out apartment/house
line 4: "Angeschaft am": date when you bought it
line 5: Postleitzahl: postal code; Ort: city in which your rented out apartment/house is
line 5: "Fertig gestellt am": date your rented out apartment/house was built
After you buy the apartment/house you will get a letter called "Einheitswertbescheid" from the tax department, giving you a "Aktenzeichen" (a long string of numbers, e.g. 145/405/1234/006/034/9)
line 6: write this long number "Aktenzeichen" from the "Einheitswertbescheid"
line 7: total square metres of all your apartments, e.g. 50 if you have one, 350=150 if you 3 apartments of 50sqm each in that building
line 8: depending on the fact on which floor your apartment is, choose a columns to fill in: Erdgeschoß = ground floor; 1. Obergeschoß = 1st floor; 2. Obergeschoß = 2nd floor; weitere Geschosse: anything above that
and fill in: your rental income in that year without the costs for heat, water, etc. = cold rent = Kaltmiete
Write the total amount for all floors in field 01
line 9: Anzahl: number of your your apartments on that floor
line 9: Wohnfläche: total square metres of all your apartments on that floor
Each year the company administrating the apartment building (Hausverwaltung) will send you a "Hausgeldabrechnung" with an overview of what the heat, water, repairs cost in that year. They will also write in there which costs you can oblige your tenant to pay (heat, water, maintenace of lift, ...) and which you have to bear yourself, like that company's fee and the repair costs.
line 12, field 4:
Normally the tenant will pay an advance on these "Nebenkosten" (utility costs) to you every month together with his "cold rent". Add up all these utility cost payments your tenant made to you that year, subtract the reimbursements you made to him when he overpaid you on utilities and write the total into field 04
line 15: if you also rent out a parking space, put in the income for that year from that into field 07
line 20: add up the amounts from field 01, field 04 and field 07
line 21: forget about that for now, here you have to fill in the sum of (depreciation + interest costs + all real costs from the "Hausgeldabrechnung") which you only calculate later on, on the second page in line 50!
line 22: rental profit or loss = subtract amount in line 21 from amount in line 20
line 33: here you will put in the amount of depreciation
- if the apartment/house was built in 1924 or earlier: 2.5% of the "Pure building price"
- if the apartment/house was built in 1925 or later: 2% of the "Pure building price"
Now the calculation of the "Pure building price" is a bit complicated, but bear with me. The idea is that your apartment /house stands on some ground and that the price of the ground doesn't change the older the house gets, but that the apartment/house itself gets older and will be worth less with time.
So how does the ta department how much of the price you paid was for the ground and how much for the building standing on it?
They then subtract this "imaginary" value of the land the building stands on from your purchase price and the result is the "Pure building price".
If not possible to get this information (such as from the UK) then you can use the building as 80% of the purchase price value.
Now we get on to the calculation of the "Pure building price":
29.500 GBP Purchase price of Helen's House
300.80 GBP for legal fees
115.00 GBP for survey costs
TOTAL 29,915.80 GBP
Conversion into EUROS:
Helen's House purchased 22.06.1984 for 29.500 GBP.
House purchase 22.06.1984 29,915.80 GBP
Conversion rate is 3,7950 DM 113,530.46 DM
Conversion from DM into EURO 58,047.20 EUR
Conversion rate from GBP to DM on 22.06.1984 taken from https://www.bundesbank.de/dynamic/actio ... 1_b01011_3
Conversion rate from DM to EUR standard 1€ = 1.95583 DM
58,047.20 € real total purchase price
--> part of that for ground: 20%: 11,609.44€
--> part of that only for building: 80% = "Pure building price": 46,437.76€
Depreciation over 50 years (I assume it was built after 1924):
0.02 x 46437.76€ = 927.75€ is the yearly depreciation
line 33, column 1 and column 4: put in the amount of yearly depreciation, 927,75€
line 39, column 1 and column 4: repair cost out of "Hausgeldabrechnung"
line 46, column 1 and column 4: land tax (= Grundsteuer, between 150€ and 300€ per year), real utility and other costs from "Hausgeldabrechnung"
line 47, column 1 and column 4: fee of company administrating the building (= Hausverwaltung)
line 50: sum of all above costs in column 4
--> now copy that amount from line 50 into line 21 on the first page and calculate your rental profit or loss in line 22
Congratulations, you're done.
Don't forget to make a copy of everything (including your filled in, signed tax forms) before you send it to them by snail mail.
... I am paying off a huge renovation project from 2020 and won't ACTUALLY make any profit for another year, my UK tax returns are showing a loss for 3 years as a result. But Germany isn't interested in that.
Let me introduce you to §82 (1) EStDV, which offers an exception to the strict "only claim expenses in the year they were paid-rule of §11 (2) EStG.
It allows you to "spread" the cost of major repairs over up to 5 years.
The nice thing is that nowhere in the law do they actually define what "major" means, so there is no limit amount, i.e. you could spread even "low" repair costs over 5 years and there is nothing the Finanzamt could do about it
§82 (1) EStDV:
• 1The taxpayer may, notwithstanding section 11, subsection 2 of the Act, spread larger expenses for the maintenance of buildings which, at the time of the payment of the maintenance expense, do not belong to business assets and are predominantly used for residential purposes evenly over two to five years.2A building is predominantly used for residential purposes if the floor area of the rooms of the building used for residential purposes amounts to more than half of the total usable floor area.3 Garages belonging to the building shall be treated as serving residential purposes irrespective of their actual use, insofar as they cannot accommodate more than one passenger car for each dwelling located in the building.4Rooms for the storage of additional motor vehicles shall always be treated as not serving residential purposes.
So as to not "lose" more than 1/5 of this 2020 repair expense, I would suggest spreading it over 5 years.
Example:
You replaced the windows and repaired the roof in 2020, total cost 40,000€.
You use §82 EStDV to spread this repair cost over 5 years:
• 8,000€ expense in 2020, which are "lost" to you. But neither did you have to pay the "Brexit Progressionsvorbehalt tax" in 2020.
• 8,000€ expense in 2021
• 8,000€ expense in 2022
• 8,000€ expense in 2023
• 8,000€ expense in 2024
Basically, your situation is exactly the same as the one in the example in this commentary, where someone had forgotten to claim for 50,000€ of repair costs in the year they had them, and by using §82 (1) EStDV "saved" at least 4/5 of the expenses by spreading the repair cost over 5 years: https://www.haufe.de/personal/haufe-per ... 94508.html