Tax & Legal

On January 14, 2026, the Federal Cabinet approved the draft of a Ninth Act Amending The Tax Consultancy Act and Other Tax Regulations. Among the various proposed amendment, the draft contains the following amendments with regard to supplementary real estate transfer tax provisions.

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.

On Thursday, 16 November 2023, the Bundestag will vote on the Federal Government's bill to finance future-proof investments.

On 16 October 2023, the long-awaited joint decrees (issued by the Supreme Tax Authorities of the Federal States) on the attribution of real estate for the purposes of the taxation of share deals (Section 1 (2a) to (3a) RETTA) became available. These adopt the previous case law of the Supreme Tax Court from 1 January 2021 (II R 44/18) and 14 December 2022 (II R 40/20) and illustrate the legal opinion with examples.

On 11 October 2023, the Federal Cabinet adopted the draft of the Financial Crime Control Act (FCCA). The draft law is intended to fundamentally revamp the fight against financial crime, especially money laundering, in Germany.

The Federal Ministry of Finance has sent the Federal States (“the Länder”) a draft bill to amend the Real Estate Transfer Tax Act for discussion. The main points of this bill are set out below: However, the draft may still be subject to changes in the discussion process or may even fail altogether.

Certain Federal States have granted a filing extension for the filing of declarations for the determination of the value of real estate for real estate tax purposes.

Where real estate is sold within ten years of acquisition, the gain realized is subject to taxation. Real estate that was used exclusively for the taxpayer's own residential purposes in the period between acquisition and sale is exempt. According to the Supreme Tax Court in its ruling of 26.10.2021 ( IX R 5/21) such privileged use also occurs where the taxpayer permanently occupies a "garden house" (fully connected to the relevant utilities) in violation of building law.

The waiver of a tax exemption under Section 4 No. 9a) VATA can be revoked as long as the tax assessment for the year in which the service was rendered is still open or can still be changed under Section 164 General Tax Code. Section 9 (3) Sentence 2 VATA in the version of the 2004 Act to Accompany the Budget does not regulate the revocation.

PwC updated its publication Real Estate Going Global - Worldwide country summaries, that provides you with a summary of tax and legal aspects of real estate investments from 50 territories around the globe.

The coalition factions' bill on the reform of the land taxes and valuation laws (Land Tax Reform Act), which was passed by the Bundestag on 18 October 2019 and approved by the Bundesrat on 8 November 2019 was published in the Federal Gazette on 2 December 2019 as the Act on the Reform of the Land Taxes and Valuation Laws

The Supreme Tax Court has accepted the sale of mining rights attaching to a property no longer owned by the seller as the sale of a real estate right to be taxed as a capital gain.

The ECJ has held that a Spanish transfer tax on the purchase of shares in a property-owning company is not similar to VAT and is therefore not precluded by the tax duplication prohibition of the Sixth Directive.