Since 1 July 2020, special reporting obligations apply in Germany for so-called cross-border tax arrangements. These result from the implementation of the European Directive “DAC 6”. Cross-border tax arrangements must be reported to the Federal Central Tax Office within 30 days, otherwise fines may be imposed. The tax administrations of the EU Member States will exchange the disclosed information among themselves through an automated procedure.

The so-called Platform to Business Regulation (in short “P2B-Regulation”) establishes rules for the first time to achieve a certain balance in view of the steadily increasing power of platform operators on the Internet (“Platform Operators”). For some situations and problems that have proved to be particularly critical for companies in the past, the regulation attempts to encourage Platform Operators to be fairer. The future will show how effective this Regulation will actually be.

When businesses or parts of businesses are transferred, there is regularly an “automatic” transfer of existing employment relationships to the acquirer. The transfer of employment relationships on the occasion of a transfer of business is of great practical relevance and repeatedly the subject of court decisions. In individual cases, difficult questions may arise regarding the allocation of existing employment relationships. The European Court of Justice (“ECJ”) has now ruled that the proportional transfer of an employment relationship to several acquirers is also possible in principle.

To cope with the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, the legislator has now launched the Second Corona Tax Assistance Act (Steuerhilfegesetz). In the following, the measures of the Corona Tax Assistance Acts that will support taxpayers’ liquidity and innovations in the field of corporate taxation (restructuring and international tax law) are explained.