The Supreme Tax Court decided that delivering a print version of a newspaper and providing first-time access to an e-paper version of that newspaper are separate main services from a VAT point of view. They are not indivisible, they each serve a separate purpose for the customer, and the e-paper is not just used to read the print version of the newspaper under the best possible conditions. However, the e-paper did have no independent value of its own at the time because the total price of the subscription did not increase when access was granted for the first time.
In a recent judgment, the Supreme Tax Court decided that tax-relevant emails are generally subject to retention requirements as commercial and business correspondence and may be requested by the tax authorities during an external audit. This also applies to digital documentation on group transfer pricing, the Supreme Tax Court said.
In future, anyone wishing to bring a monetary claim before the local (district) court will have access to simple, user-friendly and end-to-end digital court proceedings. This is envisaged in a draft bill of the Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection. The trial phase of the new online procedure is to begin at selected local courts once the legislative process has been completed.
The Commission calls on Germany and a number of other countries to fulfil their obligation to cooperate with other Member States on tax transparency of income realized through digital platforms.
On 28 November 2019 the Federal Ministry of Finance (MoF) issued a revised circular on standards for the proper keeping and storage of books, records and documents in electronic form and for data access (here “GoBD”) - ( IV A 4 - S 0316/19/10003 :001 (2019/0962810).
