Doesn’t pay to be a nice guy

No good deed goes unpunished.

German tax law invoked on the Austrian Oak with the Royal Oak no joke

History of this at Munich airport! A Bayern Munich player is up in court tomorrow (18 Jan) on charges relating to not declaring his watch at customs.

https://www.bavarianfootballworks.c...-transfer-bundesliga-champions-league-senegal

“Remember when I told you that I paid customs on this watch? I LIED”

Good to see Germany solving its big problems.

He shoulda come in on a cruise ship.

Would not necessarily have helped. If you are wearing an expensive watch upon entry into the EU, specifically Germany, the customs officers can request instant evidence that it had been bought in the EU, thus being a reimport. If such evidence is not at hand, the watch can be seized until such evidence is presented.

If an EU resident leaves the EU with an expensive watch and returns to the EU, the person should take along the receipt issued by the (EU) seller. Otherwise you can run into problems. Or, as the better alternative, simply prefer wearing a cheap "travel watch" when traveling abroad.

Fun fact: It happened to me several times that I wanted to declare goods (we are talking about a few hundreds of Euro spent for items bought abroad) upon return to the EU. In Germany there typically are two separate gates at the airports, one "nothing to declare" and one "declaration". In all cases the officers crowded in the "nothing to declare" gate and searched luggage. The gate for "declaration" was .... totally abandoned, calling for an officer without result. In one instance, after waiting and finally leaving the "declaration" gate, we stumbled across a customs officer strolling around and asked him what to do if we want to declare some items. He was stunned and after thinking suggested going to the local customs office, which is about 30 km away from the airport. I admit that we did not follow this suggestion ... 😟

I was being serious.

Lol. I need to watch that movie again.