With its decision from the 8th of September 2010, published on September 23rd, the German Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht, BVerfG) decided that the petition for judiciary review of the Solidarity Surcharge (Solidaritätszuschlag) charged in 2007 which was filed by the Financial Court (FG) of Lower Saxony is inadmissible. The Financial Court’s claim that the solidarity surcharge is unconstitutional due to it having the singular purpose of providing temporary coverage of financial requirements was ruled invalid – the reason being that the Financial Court did not adequately analyze the previous case law on the nature of supplementary taxation.
Continue →

The preclusion period for electronic input tax refund will elapse at the end of this month.

Since the beginning of the year, VAT amounts due in EU member countries other than the one in which the entrepreneur is located can only be refunded via an electronic application system. In spite of massive EU wide technical difficulties with this system, the deadline will remain on 30th of September 2010. Even though the European Commission did propose an elongation of the deadline (see this article on our blog), the proposition was not processed at the recent ECOFIN session on September 7th. ECOFIN’s informal session at the end of this month is also not expected to bear results in this regard. It is highly unlikely that there will be a retroactive extension of the deadline in any future meetings of the committee.

Eligible businesses should therefore, in their own best interest, file the necessary applications within this month.