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Legal form of establishment and estimated revenues for questionnaire "Establishment of New Branch in Another State"

February 15, 2022 | 40,00 EUR | answered by Steuerberater Knut Christiansen

Hello,

I have been running a sole proprietorship with registration in the commercial register (voluntary e.K.) for several years. Recently, an independent branch office was established - which is located in the neighboring state - and a business registration was also submitted for this. Now, I have received a request to submit the questionnaire for tax registration from the tax office in the neighboring state.

I am struggling with:

(a) providing the correct information about the form of establishment (the questionnaire only provides options for new establishment, relocation, or takeover / "other establishment cases", but the latter inevitably requires the existing owner. I assume it would then be a "new establishment" with the implicit understanding that this only applies to the branch office?

(b) following this are questions about estimated revenues and types of taxation. This is similarly confusing for me - do the revenue estimates only apply to the branch office (in this case there would be none, as the branch office is exclusively for internal production lines) or are data for the entire business entered here again?

Thank you in advance.

Steuerberater Knut Christiansen

Good evening and thank you for using frag-einen.com!

I would like to provide the following feedback to your questions.

First of all, the questionnaire for tax registration is unfortunately completely standardized, so some questions/information may not always be "logical". Filling it out follows a predefined schema that does not necessarily account for specific circumstances.

Therefore, you should indicate "Neugründung" (new establishment) here and separately inform the tax office (possibly by letter) that it is a branch.

Regarding b), the standard case is a true new establishment and the questions about turnover and profit refer to VAT as well as possible tax prepayments. However, you handle these through your "first" tax office. Therefore, you can enter 0 euros for each here and clarify the situation in the aforementioned communication to the tax office (e.g. explanation that no sales are being made here).

I hope this helps, if not, please feel free to reach out again. The portal allows for a follow-up question, so you can ask several follow-up questions in one message.

Best regards!

Knut Christiansen
Tax advisor