I am in the process to buy a new car. Both Online or when I go to the local dealers I see that I could get a strong discount if I am a Gewerbe or Freiberufler.
I am an employee I am actually also registered as Freiberufler although I dont have any income from this activity since years.
Being a one time discount at purchase, do I have anyway proove after years that I am using this car just or mainly for freelancing activity ? Of course this will not be at all the case. Or is this a discound given due to the fact to be just registered as freiberufler ?
As usual I am not having in my mind the right German keywords for googling about this. If any of you can help on this I will do the rest together with Google and Gemini
Purchase discount for freiberufler
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dstanners
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Re: Purchase discount for freiberufler
I have recently asked similar questions to my Steuerberater. I'm also a freiberufler, who rarely uses a car at all, but if I use it, then sometimes it is for business purposes. His response in brief was:
1) yes, you would need to show you were using it for business purposes (at least, roughly 75% of the time), if you wished to buy it as a freiberufler (save for the 1% rule mentioned later). This would require you to keep an accurate record of all business trips - start, stop km and purpose without any gaps. If you make any mistake in any one year, the tax man can disregard the whole thing and reject your tax return. So, it's not without risk/effort (I should highlight that my tax adviser knows how useless I am at the admin stuff - perhaps this isn't as much of a problem for more organised people).
2) there is a 1% rule, which avoids the above admin effort, but this means you'll be taxed at 1% of the book value of the car. He did explain it to me, but this only really seemed to make financial sense if I was buying a new/expensive car - which it turn only really makes sense if I needed/wanted it for driving a lot miles. My days of flash cars are behind me (tractors on the other hand.....). I'm sure there are people on this forum who fit into this category, and they will be able to explain it better.
3) if you don't really need the car for business purposes, and don't really need a new/expensive car anyway, then the other option is just to buy a used car in your private capacity (an advantage of being a freiberufler is that you can simply transfer the money from your freiberufler account to your personal account - after all, it is not a separate legal entity) and claim a mileage expense in your freiberufler accounts for every business trip you make. He was explaining, that it would be possible to justify a mileage claim of around 2 Euros per KM for business trips. In my situation, this seems to be the option which makes the most financial sense.
Hope that helps, but please note that it's perfectly possible that I misunderstood the tax implications as I'm not a steuerberater.
1) yes, you would need to show you were using it for business purposes (at least, roughly 75% of the time), if you wished to buy it as a freiberufler (save for the 1% rule mentioned later). This would require you to keep an accurate record of all business trips - start, stop km and purpose without any gaps. If you make any mistake in any one year, the tax man can disregard the whole thing and reject your tax return. So, it's not without risk/effort (I should highlight that my tax adviser knows how useless I am at the admin stuff - perhaps this isn't as much of a problem for more organised people).
2) there is a 1% rule, which avoids the above admin effort, but this means you'll be taxed at 1% of the book value of the car. He did explain it to me, but this only really seemed to make financial sense if I was buying a new/expensive car - which it turn only really makes sense if I needed/wanted it for driving a lot miles. My days of flash cars are behind me (tractors on the other hand.....). I'm sure there are people on this forum who fit into this category, and they will be able to explain it better.
3) if you don't really need the car for business purposes, and don't really need a new/expensive car anyway, then the other option is just to buy a used car in your private capacity (an advantage of being a freiberufler is that you can simply transfer the money from your freiberufler account to your personal account - after all, it is not a separate legal entity) and claim a mileage expense in your freiberufler accounts for every business trip you make. He was explaining, that it would be possible to justify a mileage claim of around 2 Euros per KM for business trips. In my situation, this seems to be the option which makes the most financial sense.
Hope that helps, but please note that it's perfectly possible that I misunderstood the tax implications as I'm not a steuerberater.
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Eric7
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Re: Purchase discount for freiberufler
You will probably need to show them either your Gewerbeschein or your entry in the Handelsregister.
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PandaMunich
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