Following the proposed amendment of the German Investment Code, newly set-up AIFs will be qualified as open-ended AIFs if shares or units are repurchased or redeemed at the request of  its shareholders or unitholders, prior to the commencement of its liquidation phase or wind-down. The amendment also affects the AIFs established prior to the amendment.

In its recently published decision the Federal Finance Court stated that tax assessment concerning the uniform and separate determination of profits according to Sec. 180 (1) No. 2a General Fiscal Code of a foreign partnership has to be addressed to the partners of the partnership. Tax returns addressed to the foreign partnership as such are void by law.

This is a change to what the Court has ruled before (I R 33/06 BFH NV 2007, 2236),  where the Court stated the tax assessments had to be addressed to the partnership itself.

Last Friday, November 29, 2013, the German legislator eventually agreed on the Act Amending the German Investment Tax Act and Other Acts (AIFM Tax Amendment Act, or “GITA–AIFM“). A period of unease and uncertainty for German investors in foreign investment funds has thus come to an end as the German Investment Tax Act (“GITA“) scope was hanging in limbo after the German legislator, during the last legislative period, failed to base the scope of application of the GITA on the new German Investment Code (Kapitalanlagegesetzbuch or “KAGB“), which implemented the European Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive (“AIFMD”) into domestic law, and thereby repealed the German Investment Act as of July 22, 2013 (see beleuchtet, dated September 5, 2013).