A report by our participants Laura T. and Ilka S. (BVB A)

On Wednesday, 22.01.2020, the pre-vocational training in the field of commercial administration, the 2nd training year of office manager and the pre-vocational training class C were visited by two representatives of the tax office Bitburg, Mrs. Bartzen and Mr. Bayerschen.

Mr. Bayerschen's firstly asked what we know about taxes and what types of taxes we know. Afterwards he presented us the definition about taxes on the overhead projector. Then Mr. Bayerschen handed out the tax spiral of 2018 to us and we discussed it together. We talked about sales tax, value added tax of 234,800 million euros, wage tax of 208,231 million euros and the sparkling wine tax of 378 million euros. He told us that the sparkling wine tax was introduced by Kaiser Wilhelm around 1902 for the purpose of establishing a navy. We were then asked to fill in the sheet on the advantages and disadvantages of moonlighting and then discussed it together. Next he gave us the law on combating unemployment and illegal employment, and we were asked to fill in assignments with examples of what we were supposed to decide whether or not it was undeclared work. We first worked on this worksheet on our own and then discussed and debated it together in the group.

Then Mrs Bartzen worked with us on the exercise "My first tax return - filling in a simplified income tax return". We were to fill in as much as possible on the tax return and then discussed the columns to be filled in in the group.

Finally, Mrs. Bartzen gave us a sample certificate of tax refund.