The sale price is below the amount you originally paid and subsequently spent. You suspect a tax loss and want to offset it against your salary in Austria. Several separate checks are missing for that conclusion. This article describes the preparation for your tax consultation and does not recommend a sale to generate a loss.
Distinguish private cash accounting from tax determination
Our editorial recommendation: First compile the actual transactions. Purchase, later expenditures, use and sale should each have their own documents and data. Mark which amounts were actually paid, only estimated or still outstanding.
This private calculation is a working basis. It does not decide which items are taken into account for tax purposes. An expense may have been important for your everyday life without being treated in exactly the same way in the tax determination for the property. The specific classification is handled by the responsible advisor.
Observe the special compensation limit
The BMF describes a special, limited compensation for private property losses instead of a free offset against all other income. § 30 Absatz 7 EStG 1988 governs the remaining private annual property loss and its limited offset against certain rental income. [BMF-VERLUST] [ESTG-30]
This article does not apply the calculation steps there nor an application to your case. Important for preparation is: a negative private balance does not automatically become an arbitrarily usable tax position against your salary.
An invented case with several levels
A seller adds her original purchase price, personal furnishing wishes and later works. The current sale proceeds are below that. She enters the difference as an expected reimbursement in her moving budget.
In preparation this supposedly certain income is again marked as open. The consultation should first determine the tax transaction and the decisive result. Afterwards other relevant property disposals in the same calendar year and suitable additional income details are checked. The example does not assert any particular reimbursement and no blanket deductibility of the mentioned expenditures.
Do not bring only the one property
Ask which other disposals and income of your own must be taken into account for the actual offset. Provide complete correct information for the period in question. A single property file can leave the necessary annual consideration incomplete.
Attach any prior tax treatment and depreciations you have. If a document is missing, note specifically from which authority it is to be obtained. An estimated history can deceive the apparent accuracy of a large spreadsheet.
Document the result with its scope
Request a comprehensible reply: which result concerns the disposal, which limitation is applied and which action or declaration is still required? Applications, temporal distribution and later use belong to the individual arrangement. This article does not prescribe a general choice for that.
For your own financial plan you should then use only an amount that has been classified accordingly. Until then the tax effect remains open. That allows you to factually assess an economically disappointing sale without arithmetically whitewashing the loss through an unresolved additional reimbursement.