Preliminary contract with the general contractor for building a house after purchasing land

Good morning,

A piece of house is bought and a piece of land. Both from different unrelated parties. End of story, Mickey Mouse. I would fight that all the way to the BFH.

You don’t need to do that, it has already happened many times and always with a negative decision for the affected land buyer.

**"A separate treatment and thus tax only on the land comes _only still_ into consideration if the new owner themselves look for a suitable construction company and there is no connection to the seller of the land." (ECJ, judgment of 27.11.2008, C - 156/08).

Because what else should a house be built on, if not on a piece of land? And just because the commissioned construction company with its expertise looks for a piece of land, it does not become their land.

It’s not that simple. You forget in your argument that the land can "only" be acquired if building is done exclusively with the mediated provider. Free choice of provider is thus not given but the economic connection can very well be proven.

I have already written this several times elsewhere in the forum: the tax office is not dumb, it has employees who do almost nothing else but monitor the known sales portals/paper media regarding real estate (and thus also land). They hardly miss anything; unless one of their employees had a very bad day. I wouldn’t rely on that

**Source: my homepage

Rhenish greetings

The questionnaire clearly checks whether the land purchase and the construction contract are connected in any way.
There are, for example, the following questions:
- whether the construction company was already fixed at the time of the land purchase contract (e.g. date of construction contract)
- whether further offers from different construction companies were obtained (with proof)
- how one learned about the property (e.g. city advertiser, internet portal, ...)

Unfortunately, the courts currently tend to follow the legal opinion of the tax authorities, although this leads to double taxation with VAT and real estate transfer tax. Actually, the VAT Act states that transactions falling under the Real Estate Transfer Tax Act are exempt from VAT.
Normally, one would have to include a 19% compensation for damages (or at least in the amount of the real estate transfer tax) in the construction contract, in case the transaction is subject to real estate transfer tax, because normally the construction company could treat the transaction as VAT-exempt afterwards.
No construction company will take the risk and effort.


I doubt whether the tax office employees (who, to my knowledge, do not even have internet access) have the time and enthusiasm to drive around any construction areas or scour portals and websites in their free time.

Hello Musketeer,

Whether the tax office employees (who, to my knowledge, don’t even have internet access) have the time and enthusiasm to drive around construction sites or scour various portals and websites in their free time, I doubt.

They don’t even need to drive; good old chance often helps them.

Here with us - Düsseldorf - Cologne - Aachen - it runs exactly as described. Many tax offices have specifically assigned employees to keep an eye on these stories. I also don’t want to know how many tax office employees disguised as interested parties I have already spoken to at local fairs (a customer of mine who works at a tax office recently pointed that out to me).

Rhenish greetings

I can agree with the building expert there. The people at the tax office are not stupid either and are extremely vigilant. For us, it was like this: we bought a plot of land from a community of heirs and only afterwards looked for building partners. In the end, it became a GÜ. We were very satisfied with this, which also became known among future neighbors who also bought from the same community of heirs. And so it happened and is happening that several houses built by the same GÜ were/are being erected next door. Recently, we received a call to clarify exactly how the land purchase and the contractor relationship worked for us. The tax office apparently suspected something again that isn’t the case...

One should not underestimate the tax offices here. When I had a tax audit of my company a few years ago, I was confronted with newspaper clippings that were already several years old and had nothing to do with the company, they only reported about my somewhat extravagant lifestyle. The tax officer told me upon my inquiry that the tax office stores ALL information, even if it is completely uninteresting!