PAYE worker, resident in Germany

jrewing

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My wife works from home (software support) for an Irish company. We are moving to Germany soon for my job and she wants to remain working. Can she remain working as a PAYE worker on an Irish contract and reside in Germany? Will she need to file a return in Germany and can she claim relief for Irish tax paid, or vice versa?

Thanks, JR
 
You will need to get German tax advice.

As your wife will be physically working in Germany for the Irish company, the Irish company may have to operate a form of German PAYE on her income - but that is their responsibility.

As she will be non-resident in Ireland, she will not be liable to Irish tax, and if her company deduct Irish tax she will have to reclaim this on a tax return.

She will also have to file returns in Germany and pay any German tax there.
 
My husband is in a similar position. He previously worked for a multinational company based out of Ireland. I got a job in Spain and he came with me and now works for the Spanish office but remains on an Irish contract and is effectively on loan to the Spanish office for a year at a time.

There was various jigs and reels clarifiying his tax status but eventually it turned out that he is liable for PRSI in Ireland (paid directly via his company) and for income tax in Spain. I am resident in Ireland for tax purpuses and so pay every there. We also submit a joint tax return in Ireland for income derived from renting our house out in Ireland and from the sale of shares.

It can be complicated and you will need to get advice, preferably from a company that has offices in Irl and Germany. However, in my experience, such advice is not always reliable either - after submitting two tax returns to Revenue and getting prompt replies from them saying that they were happy with our calculations, the company we get tax advice from proceeded in Year 3 to tell us we could not be assessed jointly as we had different tax statuses! We told them that, since they had not mentioned this the previous two years, we found this a little hard to believe and submitted our joint tax return as usual which was accepted by Revenue as usual. They also screwed up a number of calculations in relation to the Spanish tax side of things.

On the Irish side of things, Revenue have been more than helpful with clarifications and very efficient. My sense is that as long as they see you are attempting to be as compliant as possible and being entirely open, they are not interested in complicating life for you and for themselves.
 
You might find this website useful - http://toytowngermany.com/forum/ - it's for English-speaking ex-pats living in Germany. There are a couple of financial advisers who post (always with disclaimers in place so you can tell who they are) and at least one ad, iirc, for a tax adviser who specialises in helping ex-pats as well.
 
AFAIK you are liable for tax on the income you earn in Germany, not your worldwide income.
 
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