Tax & Legal

The change in the shareholder structure of a limited property-owning partnership due to a contribution of the limited partners' shares in the partnership to a shelf-company may be exempt from real estate transfer tax pursuant to Section 6a sentence 1 RETT Act provided that the transferor, i. a., held at least 95% of the shares directly or indirectly or partly directly for an uninterrupted period of five years before the legal transaction took place. This was decided by the Supreme Tax Court in a most recent judgment.

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.

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.

Under the extended trade tax deduction, rental income derived by entities whose activities are limited to the administration of their own real property is deductible from the trading income subject to trade tax. The Grand Senate of the Supreme Tax Court held that this trade tax deduction is also available for a commercial GmbH & Co. KG with respect to its interest in a pure asset-management civil law partnership.