Tax & Legal

According to a ruling of the Supreme Tax Court published on 10 March 2022, where a financial company acquires a convertible bond with the intention of achieving a short-term proprietary trading profit and sells the shares received as a result of the conversion, this meets the conditions of Section 8b (7) sentence 2 Corporation Tax Act.

According to Section 6(1) no. 3 Income Tax Act, non-interest-bearing liabilities with terms of at least 12 months, which do not constitute a deposit or advance payment, are to be discounted, i.e. a fictitious interest component (interest rate 5.5%) is initially deducted from profits and added back to profits in subsequent years as notional interest over the term of the loan.

Gains realised by financial undertakings resident in third countries on the disposal of shares are fully exempt from corporation tax. In these proceedings,the Hessian Tax Court considered whether the exclusion from the benefit of the participation exemption under Section 8b (7) of the Corporation Tax Act also applied to credit institutions and financial services institutions not resident in the EU/EEA.

The Supreme Tax Court has granted a bank the right to claim a refund of its costs in answering a tax office request for copies of a customer’s bank statements.