According to a judgment of the Supreme Tax Court, demonstrating the arrival of goods in another EU member State in the course of an intra-Community supply is not a prerequisite for the protection of legitimate expectations.
In the case of an atypical (non-typical) silent partnership interest in a limited partnership, the tax bases for the “partnership and atypical silent partner” and those for the limited partnership cannot be determined separately and uniformly in a single assessment notice, the Supreme Tax Court said in a most recently published decision.
The principle of altruism (selflessness) in the context of a non-profit organization is not limited to economic benefits for members in their professional sphere. Economic benefits in the private sphere are also detrimental to a charitable status, the Supreme Tax Court said in a most recently published decision.
In a recently issued judgment, the Supreme Tax Court decided that, upon the opening of insolvency proceedings, the second correction due to uncollectible amounts does not depend on the accuracy of the first correction made in the insolvency process. The correction made at the expense of the insolvency estate is separate from the previous correction.
In today’s decision, the European Court of Justice held that the no-poach of players agreement concluded by Portuguese football clubs during the Covid-19 pandemic might be compatible with EU law.
The EU Commission calls on Germany, France and Austria to correctly transpose the provisions of the Directive on combating money laundering by criminal law.
On 28 April 2025 the EU Commission presented its plan to modernize EU lawmaking, ensuring that laws are clearer, simpler, more efficiently enforced, based on solid evidence and better aligned with the needs of citizens and businesses.
On 24 April 2026, the Bundestag passed the Ninth Act Amending the Tax Consultancy Act and Further Tax Legislation, as amended by the Bundestag’s Finance Committee.
The application pursuant to Section 21 (2) Sentence 3 of the Reorganization Tax Act to use the book value (acquisition cost) or an intermediate value as the sale price of the shares in the case of an exchange of shares does not require any specific formal requirement. It can also be made expressly or implied.
A signing bonus which is paid by a soccer club to a professional player upon the conclusion of an employment contract may be capitalized as part of the acquisition cost for the exclusive playing rights (i. e., the one-off payment made to a player upon signing a contract with a new club) if the club is required to pay a transfer fee for the player’s change of club.
In a most recent judgment, the Supreme Tax Court decided that an invoice for advance payment entitles the recipient to deduct the underlying input VAT even if it does not include an explicit reference as to the “advance payment” and provided it is apparent that the payment is made for a service still to be supplied.
In a most recently published decision, the Supreme Tax Court held that the first acquisition of a share in a partnership by a party who was not previously a partner under civil law is a taxable event for real estate transfer tax purposes pursuant to Section 1 (2a) of the Real Estate Transfer Tax Act (RETTA).
A draft cabinet bill, which has not yet been officially published, has now been submitted by the CDU/CSU and SPD proposing an amendment to introduce a temporary tax exemption in Section 3(11d) of the draft Income Tax Act for so-called “relief bonuses” of up to EUR 1,000 paid by employers
Losses arising from the inability to trade Russian government bonds and Russian shares cannot be taken into account for income tax purposes in 2022. This was the ruling of the Saxony Finance Court in Leipzig in a recent judgment.
On 9 April 2026, the German Federal Ministry of Finance (Bundesministerium der Finanzen) published a circular amending the VAT Application Decree, which provides the administrative guidance on the application of VAT law, specifically with regard to the entrepreneurship status of tenancies in common (Bruchteilsgemeinschaften) and other entities without legal capacity.
The Bundestag will vote on the planned reduction in energy taxes on fuels on Thursday 23 April 2026. A special session of the Bundesrat has been convened for 24 April 2026, with the Second Energy Tax Reduction Act as the sole item on the agenda.
German corporate group law is characterized by the principle of the legal independence of group companies. Nevertheless, the question repeatedly arises as to what extent the parent company is liable for tortious breaches of duty by its subsidiaries. This question has significant practical implications for corporate group organization and risk management. The following article provides an overview of the corporate law foundations, the grounds for the parent company’s liability, and its limitations.
The European Commission has approved State aid schemes to provide temporary electricity price relief for energy-intensive companies in Bulgaria, Germany and Slovenia in line with the objectives of the Clean Industrial Deal.
In a recently published judgment, the Supreme Tax Court decided that the restrictions to offset losses for limited partners are not in breach of constitutional law. The temporal restrictions of Section 15a (1) Income Tax Act are not significant in such a way that they would make the application of the new regulation appear unreasonable, especially since the taxpayer is free to decide for himself whether, when, and to what extent he makes a contribution.
In a most recent judgment following a Polish request for a preliminary ruling, the General Court of the EU confirmed the incompatibility of the local input VAT regulations with EU Law and held that the right to deduct input VAT arises with the supply and the chargeability of the tax, and must not depend on the immediate possession of an invoice provided that the taxable person did receive the invoice before submitting the VAT return. Any national “forced deferral” violates the principle of fiscal neutrality.
