In its ruling of 5 April 2018, the Munich Finance Court decided that the exemption from inheritance tax for family homes does not apply to an undeveloped, in terms of land register law independent plot of land, which adjoins the family home, even if the two plots of land form an economic unit. The appeal decision of the BFH is still pending.
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.
The Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection and the Federal Ministry of Finance have jointly presented a ministers’ bill for a law on the introduction of electronic securities. The bill focuses on creating a law on electronic securities (eWpG-E). This enables the replacement of securities certificates (verbrieften Wertpapieren) through registration in an electronic securities register. The bill treats securities based on cryptotechnology (e.g. blockchain) as a subset of electronic securities. In the future, it should be possible to issue and manage crypto-securities via decentralized crypto-securities registers without the involvement of intermediaries.
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.
In times of the COVID-19 pandemic, short-time work is an important instrument to alleviate the negative economic consequences for all concerned. The parties to the employment contract may make provision for the introduction and organization of short-time work in the contracts concluded between them. Against this background, all companies are recommended to check their sample employment contracts to see whether they contain sufficient provisions.
With the law to mitigate the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic in civil, insolvency and criminal procedure law of 27 March 2020, the legislator reacted to the corona crisis and temporarily suspended or modified a number of substantial regulations in insolvency and company law.
The regulations for company law enacted as Art. 2 under the bulky title “Act on Measures in Corporate, Cooperative, Association, Foundation, and Home Ownership Law to Combat the Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic” (“COVID-19 Act”) are aimed in particular at keeping companies with a larger circle of shareholders capable of acting irrespective of existing restrictions on the possibilities of assembly. Section 1 of the COVID-19 Act therefore provides for substantial simplifications for the holding of general meetings in stock corporations (AG), partnerships limited by shares (KGaA) and European companies (SE).