The cabinet has adopted a bill to regulate the automatic exchange of bank account and investment income information with the 60 co-signatory states of the “multilateral competent authority agreement on automatic exchange of financial account information”.
The provision of Section 5 (3) of the Financial Accounts and Exchange of Information Act is in compliance with constitutional law. In particular, the automatic exchange of financial account information does not violate the right to informational self-determination of the taxpayers affected by it. This was ruled by the Supreme Tax Court who stated that the right of individuals to decide for themselves on the disclosure and use of their personal data is not unduly impaired.
On 22 March 2022, the OECD released a public consultation document concerning a new global tax transparency framework to provide for the reporting and exchange of information with respect to crypto-assets, as well as proposed amendments to the Common Reporting Standard (CRS) for the automatic exchange of financial account information between countries.
The Ministry of Finance published a circular on 2 February 2018 with a preliminary list of countries participating in the automatic exchange of information in the period to 30 September 2018. The final list should be available by the end of June 2018.
The tax authorities have now published the final Ministry of Finance circular answering questions in connection with the application of the exchange of financial information and the FATCA agreement. The draft versions of the circular had previously been released and these are now in a final version.
In two press statements the European Council approved the conclusions on a strategy for the EU’s engagement in global digital affairs and updates in the field of taxation of cooperation agreements with Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Andorra, Monaco and San Marino
On 17 May 2024, the Federal Ministry of Finance (MoF) sent a draft bill for the Finance Act 2024 (FA 2024) to the professional associations for comments by 24 May 2024. The draft has now also been published on the MoF website. The law is intended to implement changes to various areas of German tax law which need adjustment. The focus is on adjustments required by EU law and case law of the European Court of Justice (ECJ), the German Federal Constitutional Court, and the German Supreme Tax Court. Furthermore, follow-up amendments to previous legislative changes will be made. This blog summarises the key content. - Meanwhile the Federal Cabinet has approved the draft bill (see Update further below at the end of this post).
At its meeting on 5 June 2024, the Federal Cabinet adopted a government draft for the
Finance Act 2024 (FA 2024). Despite numerous revisions, the material amendments from the original draft from 8 May 2024 have been limited. The main changes are shown in italics and red in the following summary of the government draft in italics and red.
