Ask a tax advisor on the topic of Tax return

As a student, being self-employed with zero income requires a tax return.

October 6, 2015 | 50,00 EUR | answered by Ralph J. Schnaars

Before starting my studies, I was registered as self-employed with the Chamber of Industry and Commerce (IHK) due to my work in an insurance office.

I always filed a tax return, but my income was always only 200 euros, so no taxes were due.

I deregistered this self-employment 5 years ago, as I had not generated any income from it for 7 years.

It turned out in early 2015 that the responsible municipality had overlooked the whole situation and had not processed my deregistration. I had also completely forgotten about it.

Fortunately, I inquired again and made sure that the deregistration of the business was finally carried out by the end of 2014.

However, I had not filed a separate income tax return for 5 years, as I believed that the self-employment had long been terminated. Additionally, no income was generated from this activity.

After my studies, I started my legal clerkship and always submitted a regular income tax return, truthfully filled out, as there were no additional income except for my regular legal clerk income.

Now I have been asked to submit my income tax return for 2014 by October 22, 2015, which I assume is related to the deregistration of the self-employment at the end of 2014.

It should not be a problem, as there is nothing to report.

Could there be any issues now, since I did not submit a separate tax return for the self-employment in previous years (income always being 0)?

What would be the best course of action here?

Ralph J. Schnaars

Dear inquirer,

The best and easiest would be to have the commercial deregistration dated to the day when self-employment was truly ended. According to your information, this was 5 years ago. The municipality may initially resist, but it is simply the truth, and the tax office would then receive the corrected deregistration, so that no further tax obligations could arise from the self-employment.

That would then settle all years.

We recently successfully enforced such an extremely late deregistration a few months ago in Schleswig-Holstein, so that the tax office could close its files accordingly.

I hope I could help you with your considerations.

Kind regards,

Ralph J. Schnaars

STWB Steuerberatungsgesellschaft mbH
Direct contact +49 (0)171 525 20 42
Email mail @ stwb-steuer.de