Flood victims receive tax aid

The heavy rain and flood­ing not only claimed lives, but also caused enor­mous eco­nom­ic dam­age. To account for the mate­r­i­al dam­age, the finance min­istries of the states of North Rhine-West­phalia and Rhineland-Palati­nate as well as the Bavar­i­an State Tax Office have each enact­ed dis­as­ter decrees. Thomas Loibl from Eco­vis in Land­shut explains which tax sup­port mea­sures flood vic­tims can receive.

What happens if my accounting records were destroyed by the water?

If account­ing doc­u­ments and oth­er records have been destroyed or lost due to the storm, there are no adverse tax con­se­quences to be drawn from this. Impor­tant: The affect­ed tax­pay­er should doc­u­ment the destruc­tion or loss in a time­ly man­ner and, to the extent pos­si­ble, pro­vide proof or cred­i­ble evidence.

What can business owners do to mitigate the significant financial burdens?

The respec­tive dis­as­ter decrees con­tain more than 20 tax sup­port mea­sures for tax­pay­ers who are direct­ly and not insignif­i­cant­ly affect­ed — for pri­vate indi­vid­u­als as well as spe­cial reg­u­la­tions for entre­pre­neurs. Some exam­ples from both:

Defer­ral and enforce­ment mea­sures as well as adjust­ment of advance payments.
Note: Affect­ed par­ties can sub­mit the appli­ca­tions until Octo­ber 31, 2021.

Defer­ral and remis­sion appli­ca­tions for trade tax.
These appli­ca­tions must be sub­mit­ted to the municipalities.

Spe­cial depre­ci­a­tion options for reconstruction
This allows expens­es on a larg­er scale to be tak­en into account imme­di­ate­ly to reduce taxes.

Spe­cial reg­u­la­tions for agri­cul­ture and forestry and income from rent­ing and leasing
Farm­ers and land­lords can take advan­tage of addi­tion­al sup­port measures.

Pos­si­bil­i­ty to waive prop­er­ty tax
Inter­est­ing for all house and apart­ment owners.

Expens­es for exis­ten­tial­ly nec­es­sary items (apart­ment, house­hold goods, cloth­ing) as extra­or­di­nary burdens

How are donations eligible?

The oblig­a­tion to pro­vide proof of dona­tions has now been sim­pli­fied. In addi­tion, dona­tion cam­paigns can also be orga­nized by non-prof­it cor­po­ra­tions that, accord­ing to their arti­cles of asso­ci­a­tion, do not pro­mote char­i­ta­ble pur­pos­es, for exam­ple, or are region­al­ly bound.

Fur­ther­more, so-called dona­tions from wages and salaries are pos­si­ble. In this case, an employ­ee waives pay­ment of part of his or her salary. The employ­er pays this amount into a dona­tion account of an insti­tu­tion enti­tled to receive dona­tions. The donat­ed por­tion of the salary is then not tak­en into account as wages. No pay­roll tax or social secu­ri­ty must be paid. “How­ev­er, the employ­er must ful­fill and doc­u­ment the use require­ment. Impor­tant: The donat­ed salary must be record­ed in the pay­roll account,” says tax con­sul­tant Thomas Loibl.

Tip: Even expens­es for exis­ten­tial­ly nec­es­sary items (apart­ment, house­hold goods, cloth­ing) can be tak­en into account for tax pur­pos­es. In excep­tion­al cas­es, these can be deduct­ed as extra­or­di­nary expenses.