– If you sell the electricity generated by your photovoltaic system, you have to pay sales tax on it. However, some of the effort associated with the system can be offset against this.
In Baden-Württemberg it is now mandatory for almost every new building, in other federal states it is still voluntary: the installation of a solar system on the roof of the home. But no matter how: Whoever generates income through the system must pay sales tax to the tax office.
“The owner of the system can also claim input tax from the costs of acquisition, operation and maintenance and offset it against sales tax,” says Daniela Karbe-Gessler from the Taxpayers’ Association. Just be careful: the input tax deduction does not apply to all expenses associated with the investment.
Roof repair is not related to solar system
In a specific case, the Nuremberg Finance Court (Az. 2 K 826/20) judged that a roof repair is not related to the operation of a photovoltaic system and therefore no input tax offset can take place. An entrepreneur had a photovoltaic system installed on his private home. The roof was damaged.
The entrepreneur had the damage repaired by a roofer and carpenter. He took into account the sales tax shown in the craftsmen’s invoices as an input tax deduction in his sales tax advance returns for the photovoltaic system. The tax court, like the tax office before it, rejected the pre-registration. Only part of the input tax was taken into account. Since the entrepreneur uses the building more than 90 percent privately, only ten percent could be attributed to corporate use.
“The input tax from the invoices cannot be deducted in full by the entrepreneur if the repair also partially benefits the privately used area,” says Karbe-Gessler. It is irrelevant that the damage to the roof was caused solely by the installation of the photovoltaic system. This alone does not mean that it can be assumed that repairs will only be used for business purposes. An appeal was lodged against the judgment.
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