The story of a non-resident landlord, tired of paying €500+ a year for a form an algorithm can fill.

The last straw

2025. Like a lot of foreign owners, I had a bad year on one of my German flats — vacancy between tenants, a heating-system replacement, the WEG voting an extra Sonderumlage. Net result: I was bleeding cash, and the Finanzamt didn't care. As a non-resident, beschränkte Steuerpflicht kicks in from the very first euro. No Grundfreibetrag, no mercy.

Then the Steuerberater invoice landed: 520 €. Up from 480 € the year before. For one Anlage V. In a language I read with a dictionary open, sent over four weeks of email ping-pong because they don't pick up the phone in English.

"I made almost nothing this year. And I'm supposed to pay 520 € so someone types numbers into the same form they typed last year?"

I looked at what the Steuerberater actually did. He took the figures I sent him, applied AfA at the rate fixed by §7 Abs. 4 EStG, ran the 15 % test, allocated the WEG/Hausgeld between deductible and reserve, and filled in Anlage V Zeile by Zeile. Same logic, every year.

I'm a developer. When I see a repetitive process with fixed rules and a long turnaround, I see something automatable.

A weekend later

I read through the Einkommensteuergesetz, the BMF guidance on Vermietung und Verpachtung, and decoded the Anlage V form line by line. And I realised: it's all known rules and repetitive math.

• AfA depreciation: fixed rates by building age — 2 %, 2.5 %, or 3 % under §7 Abs. 4 EStG, pro-rata on the building portion of the purchase price.
• 15 % test(§6 Abs. 1 Nr. 1a): if early renovations exceed 15 % of the building basis, they're capitalised — pure rule-based logic.
• WEG / Hausgeld: deductible running costs vs. Instandhaltungsrücklage that only counts when actually spent — a clean split, once you know the rules.
• Anlage V form: always the same Zeile, always the same mapping from your inputs.

I built the tool for myself first. It worked. I gave it to a couple of friends — French, British, an Australian — who all rent out a flat in Berlin or Leipzig and were paying the same kind of bills. It worked for them too. So I decided to make it available to everyone in the same boat.

My commitments

Who is Anlage V Easy for?

Anlage V Easy is built for landlords who:

• Own one or two long-term rental properties in Germany.
• Live abroad (beschränkte Steuerpflicht) — or live in Germany but don't want to pay a Steuerberater for one Anlage V.
• Don't want to spend €300 to €800 every year for a service they can do themselves in 10 minutes.
• Want to keep control over their data and their filing.

If your situation is complex — vermögensverwaltende GmbH, GbR with multiple owners, gewerbliche Vermietung, inheritance with cross-border issues — a real Steuerberater is still the right call. But for 90 % of standard non-resident Anlage V filings, Anlage V Easy does the job.

Who am I?

I'm Yann Lephay. Developer and cross-border property investor. I've dealt with vacant flats, special-assessment WEG calls, the Finanzamt waiting for its share regardless of whether rent came in, and on top of all that, the Steuerberater invoice that goes up every year.

Anlage V Easyis the tool I wish I'd had on day one. I'm not a Steuerberater — this is software, not personalised tax advice within the meaning of §3 StBerG. But for a standard Anlage V filing, it does the job.

A question? A bug? An idea? contact@anlage-v-easy.com. I read and reply to every email myself.