Technology, productivity and economic growth; where does the west go from here?

Environmental product charge: approaching deadline!

In 2012, HUF 57 billion, slightly less than the targeted HUF 60 billion, was collected from product charge. The revenue target was not reduced for 2013 either, we can therefore assume that the tax authority will use every effort to meet the target.

Environmental Product Charge, 2013

Accordingly, until 14 February 2013, returns, payments, supplementary filings and self-revisions relating to the environmental product charge will have to be submitted to the Customs Authority while after this date, these will have to be filed with NAV.

Company car taxation in Italy

Law Decree 16/2012 has modified Art. 164 of the Italian income and corporation tax act (TUIR) which governs the deductibility of the cost relating to private and commercial vehicles. The mentioned law change reduced the percentage of the deductibility of costs related to private cars assigned and not assigned to employees. Relevant cases:

Enhanced tax authority scrutiny

Guideline 3004/2013 already available (only in Hungarian language) on the website of the Hungarian Tax and Customs Authority (NAV) includes the criteria to be inspected, the audit aspects and the sanctions to be applied on a standard basis during the tax audits of enterprises having only VAT registrations in Hungary.

New tax measures in Belgium

The most important changes are described below:

Changes in German group taxation

There are many formal requirements applicable to such agreements in German company law. Until now a significant risk existed that if all the profit (or loss) was not transferred to the parent entity, e.g. due to errors in the annual accounts of the subsidiary, the tax authorities regarded the agreement as not executed.

Tax Treaty non-discrimination provisions considered in two recent UK group relief judgements

The courts found in the Felixstowe Dock and FCE Bank cases that denying the group relief between two UK resident companies was not in line with the Tax Treaty non-discrimination provision where the UK companies were held through a non-UK parent. Both cases concerned group relief between UK companies – cross border group relief was not claimed.

Language of the transfer pricing documentation

There is no compulsory legal regulation regarding the language of the transfer pricing documentation, which means that it can be prepared in any language.

Audit obligation in 2013

Audit obligation in 2013 – what should companies look out for to make sure that they meet statutory obligations (step one).