The Supreme Tax Court has held that failure to recognise a British company as an Organschaft parent infringes the tax treaty prohibition on discrimination.
The finance ministry has decreed that a Supreme Tax Court judgment accepting a British company as the parent of a trade tax Organschaft is not to be followed as a precedent.
In a recent case, the Supreme Tax Court decided that the liability of a controlled company (subsidiary) in a tax consolidation group (“Organschaft”) for the tax liability of its controlling company (parent in the Organschaft) is not necessarily limited to such taxes which arose during the existence of the Organschaft. The controlled company may be liable to the extent that the parent is required to pay tax on the controlled company’s turnover and may deduct input tax amounts from invoices for services obtained by the controlled company.
In response to an infringement proceeding of the European Commission, the finance ministry has decreed that EU/EEA registered companies with their place of management in Germany are entitled to join an Organschaft as subsidiaries.
The Supreme Tax Court has held that a company with an “untypical” silent partner cannot surrender its entire profit to its parent and thus cannot conclude the profit pooling agreement necessary for an Organschaft.
The Supreme Tax Court has held that there is ultimately no trade tax disallowance of expenses directly connected with tax-free dividend income earned through an Organschaft subsidiary.
The Supreme Tax Court has held that an Organschaft parent must be an active business by the effective date of the first profit surrender, i.e. the first year end of the subsidiary. It also held that the provision allowing profit pooling agreements with formally inadequate loss subvention provisions to be corrected by December 31, 2014 applies to all agreements existing on February 26, 2013 regardless of the nature of the inadequacy.
The Supreme Tax Court has held that restricting a trade tax privilege to domestic units of a tax group does not infringe a group’s freedom of Establishment.
The Supreme Tax Court has rejected an Organschaft as the profit pooling agreement was not properly implemented when the annual profit was surrendered without covering losses brought forward.
According to a decision of the Supreme Tax Court published on 9 November 2017 a profit pooling agreement will not be recognised for tax purposes where the compensation agreement with the external shareholder contains both the right to a variable compensation payment calculated on the basis of the profits of the subsidiary/controlled company/"Organgesellschaft" (“subsidiary”) and a fixed amount.
The Supreme Tax Court has held that there is no serious doubt that a profit pooling agreement must provide for a ten year statute bar on loss subvention claims of an Organschaft subsidiary.
VAT claims may also be asserted in insolvency proceedings against a GmbH, if the GmbH, which had previously been treated as a controlled company in a fiscal unity (Organschaft), which was subsequently not deemed to exist, actually received the VAT owed by it from the assumed controlling company (Organträger).
The Supreme Tax Court decided that the portfolio dividends received by the controlled company within a tax group from domestic and foreign corporations via an investment fund are subject to trade tax in full. A deduction of foreign withholding taxes in accordance with Section 34c (2) of the German Income Tax Act is not possible when determining the trade income tax basis of the tax consolidation group (Organschaft).
The Federal Constitutional Court held that the retroactive introduction of Sec. 14 (3) Corporation Tax Act concerning the treatment of over-surrenders arising from periods prior to the membership in an Organschaft (tax consolidation group) to be in part unconstitutional and thus invalid.
The profit pooling agreement under the concept of a tax consolidation group (Organschaft) must be concluded for at least five years and be followed throughout its entire term. According to the decision of the Supreme Tax Court recognition of the Organschaft is to be denied with retroactive effect if preliminary annual financial statements of the controlled company can no longer be adjusted due to insolvency and if a different result would have been reported in the final annual financial statements if the accounting principles under commercial law had been applied correctly.
A partial compromise was reached by a mediation committee of the two chambers of Parliament leading to a modified Bill for the Revision and Simplification of Corporate Taxation and of the Tax Law on Travel Cost and to acceptance of a modest increase in the basic personal allowance for income tax. The Bundestag has now passed both bills and forwarded them to the Bundesrat for confirmation at its next session, due to be held on February 1, 2013.
An amendment to a statutory law which was passed by the Bundestag and Bundesrat in December 2020, entered into force on 1 January 2021, requires a review of those profit and loss pooling agreements concluded and last amended before 27 February 2013. This pertains to profit and loss pooling agreements (PLPA) for tax groups (“Organschaft”) with a GmbH as controlled subsidiary and which do not (yet) contain an explicit and unconditional reference to Section 302 of the German Stock Corporation Act (GSCA) which includes future changes of the provision (so-called “dynamic reference”).
