Hello,

I have been working as a freelancer in Munich since May 2011. I invoice my agency every month and they pay me the amount PLUS 19% VAT. 
I have hired a steuerberatur for two things :
1. Pay or forward the VAT I received on my invoice to the Finanzamt.
2. Annual income tax filing.

For (1), my steuerberatur charges 120 Euro (including VAT) every month.
For (2), he charges around 850 Euro including VAT once a year.

I feel he is charging me a lot and there is surely room for some saving. Many of my german colleagues told me I could do (1) very easily on my own as it does not involve too many calculations. It simply involves VAT received from my employer minus VAT I paid for business related purchases. 
The theory is fine. But the question is how do I go about it. My target is to start filing monthly VAT on my own. That alone will save me 1500 odd Euros a year. Lot of money isn't it? 

Regards,
Tejas

Hi, I have been working as a freelancer since March 2006 and I would have given you exactly the same advice as your colleagues. It's better to let your tax consultant do (2) as it involves many calculations and some rules and regulations you don't want to mess with (I ended up paying nearly 10K of back taxes for 2007, 2008 and 2009 because I missed some of them)
For (1), if you work under Windows, you can download the Elster programm (www.elster.de) and fill your Umsatzsteuer-Voranmeldung form, the most important things are your VAT and the VAT of your purchases during the month: the first one, you will have to fill it in the field 81 of the form and the second one in the field 61. The result of what you will have to pay will be automatically marked in the field 83. Note that you have to declare it and pay it before the 12th of each following month, unless you want to get fined (25 euros when you're late, *even for a day*).
If you are under MAC as I am, you can register on www.elster.de and do that online after receving an activation key from your Finanzamt.

D.

thank you for the detailed reply. My knowledge of German is very limited as of now. I went through the website using goolge translate. But things are not completely clear. If you are based in Munich and if its possible for you, could you give me a small demo at any time / place convenient to you? I guess its a question of getting started. Thence, it would just be following a routine.

If you want a face-to-face demo, you will have to buy a ticket and come in Berlin to see me :-) The easiest way would be to use Teamviewer if you can install it on your computer. Drop me a mail at daolwin on gmail and we will see how we can arrange that, but I'll take half the fee you pay for your tax consultant as consulting fee :-)

D.

Hello,

Just dropped you an email on daolwin@gmail.com. Please check it.

Thanks and Regards,
Tejas