Lawyer's £300,000 for writing letter
A German lawyer won himself a place in the Guinness Book of Records after he earned more than £300,000 for less than an hour's work.
Dr Juergen Graefe won the fee for sending a standard letter to the German taxman to correct an elderly client's tax bill.
The letter pointed out that his client could not have possibly run up a 287 million euro tax bill on his 17,000 euro income from investments.
The taxman agreed and amended the amount to a few thousand euros and, under German law, the lawyer based his fee on the amount of the reduction.
This week a German court ruled that the lawyer should get a 440,000 euro fee for his work. The taxman foots the bill.
The lawyer's client was a 70-year-old from St Augustin near Bonn, who was sent the bill after visiting his local tax office to make his tax declaration in 2001.
He put down an estimate on his earnings of 11,000 euros, but then corrected it to 17,000 - which was mistakenly entered into the computer by tax staff as an income of 1,100,017,000 euros.
A spokesman for Dr Graefe said: "The taxman follows up every little mistake, squeezing every penny out of the good citizens of Germany and showing no mercy in their demands for tax money.
"Why should my client be expected to give up his perfectly legal right to have his fee paid?"
![[b]](/data/avatars/m/0/144.jpg?1334500048){kind=avatar}
Slamming the ham? 
