Tax & Legal

In a ruling from May 2025, the Federal Constitutional Court decided that the lack of a written contract between related German companies is not sufficient ground for refusing the deduction of business expenses. Rather, an overall assessment must be made to determine whether the agreement actually took place, even if made verbally or implied.

In a most recent judgment, the Supreme Tax Court decided on the transfer pricing method to determine an arm's length interest on intercompany loans. In its decision the highest tax court also provides some guidelines on the parameters to be observed from a purely tax point of view. Also, the court takes time to compare the adequacy of the various standard methods under review.

On 8 November 2017 the Supreme Tax Court published a decision made on 9 May 2017 on a case involving a gratuitous share transfer between friends, where the transferor had significant acquisition costs. The Court held that the presumption of a commercial transaction is not rebutted purely because a friendship exists between the contracting parties.

The finance ministry has decreed that Supreme Tax Court judgments limiting the income adjustments under the Foreign Tax Act to questions of amount are not to be followed as precedents prohibiting adjustments by reason of the nature of the transaction under review.

The Supreme Tax Court has held that a write-off of an irrecoverable related-party loan is not subject to income adjustment under the arm’s length rules, although the interest rate should reflect the bad debt risk.