Tax & Legal

In a recently published judgment, the Supreme Tax Court decided in a case involving the transfer of a limited partnership to the sole remaining limited partner in the legal form of a limited liability company (GmbH) by way of universal succession through accrual, among other things, that the limited partner's allowable loss determined at the time of termination within the meaning of Section 15a (4) of the Income Tax Act can be offset by the limited limited company against its future profits.

In a recently published decision, the Supreme Tax Court held that the profit from the sale of a limited partnership share which is proportionally encumbered with an atypical sub-participation is fully subject to trade tax.

When determining whether a corporation with a direct interest in the partnership owning real estate is considered a new shareholder within the meaning of Section 1 (2a) sentence 4 of the Real Estate Transfer Tax Act because at least 90% of the shares are transferred to new shareholders, only the shareholding in the corporation must be taken into account. In a most current judgment, the Supreme Tax Court held that a previous participation of the new shareholder of the corporation in the partnership owning the real estate is irrelevant in this respect.

The Supreme Tax Court has ruled that for the purposes of considering the allocation of a partner's share in a GmbH to the Special Business Assets II of his partnership interest, regard must be had not only to the business relationship of the GmbH with the partnership – but also to whether the GmbH has a substantial business operation of its own.

In a case involving a charge to real estate transfer tax (RETT), the Supreme Tax Court granted the taxpayer interim relief in the form of a suspension from execution (i.e. a delayed tax payment), as the question arose as to whether one of the parties to the transaction, a letterbox company, had legal capacity.

The Supreme Tax Court has decided that a gain arising from a share disposal can be rolled-over on a tax-neutral basis under Section 6b Income Tax Act where the privileged asset has been sold to a related entity. However, the Court also ruled that the part of the gain attributable to the write-up of the privileged asset – where the earlier write-down of the shares had reduced the taxable profits -could not be rolled over as a tax-neutral transfer under section 6b of the Income Tax Act.

Profits arising from the sale of an interest in a partnership are not to be included in the extended trade tax deduction for real estate enterprises.

In a decision published in March 2017 the Supreme Tax Court held that - in the case of a two-tier partnership structure – the interest expense of the Dutch partner holding only an indirect share in a German limited partnership is nevertheless tax deductible when computing his limited German tax liability resulting from his investment in the German partnership.

The Supreme Tax Court has held that rental income earned through a Hungarian partnership is not automatically exempt as the income from a foreign permanent establishment, merely because the partnership was taxed locally as a corporation, or because the income would have been treated as trading income had it been earned through a German partnership.