Readers' forum : Lost in translation

We have a client who is a German national and is now UK resident. All of her income is from a German partnership and this includes some dividends and interest but mainly comprises rent from commercial properties. The partnership has a large number of partners and holds a vast number of commercial properties. We do not act for any of the other partners and as far as we are aware they are all German residents.

We are provided with the relevant German partnership tax return pages for our client and we enter this income on her UK tax return. However we have now been advised that for UK tax purposes we are expected to obtain all of the German accounting records for the partnership and prepare a set of accounts for the entire partnership to recalculate our client’s share under UK tax rules.

This...