One of the other things that came out of the local city hall announcements this week in my town (Wiesbaden).....they've decided to go forward with the 'second-house-tax'.
Non-Germans aren't that familiar with the concept so I'll lay out the basics.
Huns is a German who has done good in life.....attended university.....got hooked with a great 'trophy-wife'.....bought a fine house in a great small town in the middle of nowhere....and come to find at the age of thirty-five this great opportunity in life to work at a better job as a manager and pull a better pay-scale. But there's this one problem.....the job is anywhere from 90 minutes to three hours away. The wife doesn't want to move....the kids are happy in the quiet country life....and the house payment is perfect.
Huns makes this decision.....he'll take some of the great extra pay that he's now making and rent or buy a condo near the second job.....driving over on Monday morning and return to the real house on Friday night.
The city of Wiesbaden now estimates over twenty-five thousand people in the area (roughly 280,000 in population) are living the second-house situation. These are people who work in Wiesbaden, or people who work elsewhere and commute back to Wiesbaden each weekend. In some ways, it's created a housing issue because there are numerous apartments or condos in the area.....which are second residences in some fashion.
The city? It's looking for various new ways of creating taxation, and this angle fits easily. If you aren't happy with the situation? Well.....you could move to any of a dozen fine communities outside of Wiesbaden for a residence and thus be outside of the zone of taxation influence.
An American might look at this.....buy an RV and just find a local RV park to house his trailer while working in the local area from Monday through Friday, and just try to stay under the radar of the second-property tax.
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