On May 21, 2019, the Federal Ministry of Finance published a Circular on sec. 1 - 24, sec. 50 and sec. 56 of the German Investment Tax Act (BMF May 21, 2019, BStBl. I 2019, 527). With this publication, the administrative regulations on investment funds (chapter 2), the transitional regulations and the tax withholding regulations for special investment funds (chapter 3) are now available in their final version (for the time being). The tax authorities will apply these rules to all open cases from 2018 onwards. For matters covered by these regulations, previously published BMF Circulars and written replies to associations are thus obsolete. We would like to inform you about some of those regulations that seem of particular importance.

The regulations on special investment funds (chapter 3) as outlined in the third draft of the Circular (dated June 15, 2018), however, are currently still being revised or amended and will probably not be published in their final version until the beginning of 2020.