2018 German Tax Reform For Investment Funds

A new tax law came into effect on 1 January 2018 affecting German domestic and foreign funds holding German investments or being promoted by German asset managers.

There were various reasons for this new law to be put into place: firstly, the old law discriminated against foreign investment funds and it facilitated unwanted tax avoidance. Secondly, it was both too expensive and too complex for an error-free application at (retail) investor level.

While the taxation of […]

By |February 9th, 2018|

List Of Offshore “Tax Havens” Approved

Following amendments to the Tax Code effective January 2017, the President of the Republic approved on 11 July the list of low-tax foreign jurisdictions (and territories), i.e., those “where the tax rate is at least twice lower than the rate established by [the] Tax Code and with law protecting confidentiality of information of companies able to protect secrecy of their financial data or [beneficial owners]”. Payments to persons of such jurisdictions will be considered […]

By |February 8th, 2018|

Tax Evasion, Its Facilitators, And The New Corporate Duty To Stop Them

The Criminal Finances Act 2017 contains a number of provisions aimed at tackling financial crime, which are expected to come into force later this year. The government has now announced the timetable for implementing Part 3 of the Act, which is about the new ‘corporate’ offences of failure to prevent the facilitation of tax evasion.

The concept of the offences is undeniably complex, and is best understood when broken down into its three constituent parts.

The […]

By |February 7th, 2018|