The German Federal Ministry of Finance has published a discussion draft on the amendment of the German real estate transfer tax. This amendment is in response to the reform of the German Act to Modernize the Law on Partnerships (Gesetz zur Modernisierung des Personengesellschaftsrechts (MoPeG)), which will fundamentally change the legal treatment of partnerships as of January 1, 2024, and thus will also have consequences under German tax law, specifically German real estate transfer tax. In particular, the discussion draft will address the taxation of share acquisitions in real estate (holding) companies, and specifically, it is about the so-called share deals. Whether the amendment of the real estate transfer tax proposed in the discussion draft properly addresses these issues, or if it misses the mark, remains to be seen.

In this beinformed, we wish to understand the draft to reform the German real estate transfer tax in general terms; we will have to shed light on the details later in an upcoming newsletter when the discussion draft is further developed in the legislative process.

The draft bill of the Act on the Financing of Investments for the Future (Future Financing Act) was published in April. It also provides for amendments to the German Investment Code (Kapitalanlagegesetzbuch) in order to create certainty, at least in supervisory law, for the handling of investments in connection with renewable energies. We actually wanted to report on this only once a government draft was available. But that took us too long now.

On March 21, 2023, the German Federal Ministry of Finance published a discussion draft for a law to implement the Directive to ensure a global minimum taxation of multinational groups and large domestic groups in the Union (Mindestbesteuerungsrichtlinie-Umsetzungsgesetz).

In this beinformed we want to look at and discuss the scope, generally referred to as scoping. Please note that we are discussing the German draft Act and that we do not necessarily use the English terms of the EU-directive.