Discussion Draft of a Minimum Tax Adjustment Act

For tax pe­riods from 2024 on­wards, cor­po­rate groups with a to­tal an­nual tur­no­ver of at least 750 mil­lion eu­ros in at least two of the pre­vious four fis­cal years must check whe­ther the pro­fits of all group mem­bers re­si­dent in a ju­ris­dic­tion are sub­ject to ef­fec­tive ta­xa­tion of 15 %. In the event of lo­wer ef­fec­tive tax ra­tes, a cor­re­spon­ding tax in­crease amount must be de­ter­mi­ned and paid in or­der to raise the tax bur­den to the mi­ni­mum le­vel of 15 %.

This so-cal­led glo­bal mi­ni­mum ta­xa­tion, which was de­ci­ded at the OECD le­vel, was in­tro­du­ced in Ger­many with the Mi­ni­mum Tax Act of 21 De­cem­ber 2023 (BGBl. I 2023, No. 397).

On 15 De­cem­ber 2023, the OECD publis­hed ad­di­tio­nal ad­mi­nis­tra­tive gui­de­lines, pri­ma­rily con­cerning the so-cal­led CbCR-ba­sed Safe Har­bour. These are re­gu­la­ti­ons that grant tem­porary re­lief using coun­try-spe­ci­fic re­ports (CbCR). The pri­mary aim of the Mi­ni­mum Tax Ad­just­ment Act is to im­ple­ment the chan­ges spe­ci­fied by the OECD in the CbCR-ba­sed Safe Har­bour into na­tio­nal law. The Fe­deral Mi­nis­try of Fi­nance pre­sen­ted a dis­cus­sion draft on 20 Au­gust 2024, which in­clu­des, among other things, the fol­lo­wing chan­ges to the Mi­ni­mum Tax Act:

• Some mo­di­fi­ca­ti­ons are plan­ned for the so-cal­led Safe Har­bour re­gu­la­ti­ons.
  • The op­tion to use the re­gu­la­ti­ons should ex­pli­citly exist even if there is no ob­li­ga­tion to pre­pare a CbCR. In this case, data that would have been re­por­ted shall be used (§ 84 para. 1 sen­tence 2 Min­StG-E).
  • It should also be ad­ded that a joint ven­ture or a joint ven­ture group in a tax ju­ris­dic­tion should be trea­ted as a se­pa­rate tax ju­ris­dic­tion that is in­de­pen­dently tes­ted (own blen­ding cir­cle) if busi­ness units of the cor­po­rate group are lo­ca­ted in the same tax ju­ris­dic­tion (§ 85 para. 1 sen­tence 1 Min­StG-E).
  • The de­fi­ni­tion of a qua­li­fied CbCR should be re­phra­sed. It should be re­qui­red that the data is col­lec­ted ba­sed on qua­li­fied ac­coun­ting in­for­ma­tion and is de­ri­ved from uni­formly de­ter­mi­ned ac­coun­ting data for a tax ju­ris­dic­tion (§ 87 sen­tence 1 no. 1 sen­tence 1 Min­StG-E). So far, the law con­cep­tually re­fers to a "qua­li­fied group fi­nan­cial state­ment." Re­co­gnized as qua­li­fied ac­coun­ting in­for­ma­tion should, among others, be the ac­coun­ting data of busi­ness units ad­jus­ted to uni­form group ac­coun­ting and va­lua­tion ru­les for con­so­li­da­tion pur­po­ses (re­por­ting pa­cka­ges) if they com­ply with the CbCR re­qui­re­ments.
  • It should be ex­pli­citly de­fi­ned which CbCR data should be used for a per­ma­nent es­ta­blish­ment if no qua­li­fied ac­coun­ting in­for­ma­tion has been pre­pa­red (§ 87 sen­ten­ces 2 ff. Min­StG-E).
  • The newly in­ser­ted § 87a Min­StG-E should re­gu­late the con­side­ra­tion of the ac­qui­si­tion me­thod for CbCR Safe Har­bours. In prin­ci­ple, this should only be pos­si­ble if the ac­qui­si­tion me­thod is al­re­ady ap­plied wi­thin the frame­work of the CbCR.
  • Ad­di­tio­nally, § 87b Min­StG-E should in­clude re­gu­la­ti­ons for dea­ling with hy­brid ar­bi­trage agree­ments in the con­text of the CbCR Safe Har­bours.
• Be­si­des chan­ges in the CbCR-ba­sed Safe Har­bour, a si­gni­fi­cant change in the dis­cus­sion draft con­cerns the con­side­ra­tion of de­fer­red ta­xes in the con­text of the full cal­cu­la­tion (i. e., out­side the scope of the CbCR-ba­sed Safe Har­bours), which are not re­por­ted due to an op­tion or due to off­set­ting in the HB II re­sult. Ac­cor­din­gly, de­fer­red ta­xes should also be con­side­red in de­ter­mi­ning the ef­fec­tive tax rate (GloBE ETR) when there is an ex­cess of de­fer­red ta­xes due to the use of the op­tion ac­cor­ding to § 274 para. 1 sen­tence 2 HGB not being re­por­ted in the ba­lance sheet (§ 50 para. 1 sen­tence 2 no. 3 Min­StG-E) or when ac­tive and pas­sive de­fer­red ta­xes are off­set against each other. The de­ve­lop­ment of the cor­re­spon­ding po­si­ti­ons must be tra­ce­able ba­sed on ap­pro­priate data.
• The exis­ting tran­si­tio­nal ar­ran­ge­ments for hy­brid top-up ta­xa­tion should be mo­di­fied (§ 88 pa­ras. 3 and 4 Min­StG-E).
• For the trans­mis­sion of the mi­ni­mum tax re­port to be pre­pa­red for the first time, an ex­ten­ded trans­mis­sion dead­line of 18 months af­ter the end of the fis­cal year is al­re­ady pro­vi­ded for (§ 75 para. 3 sen­tence 2 Min­StG). To en­sure that this dead­line ex­ten­sion is also gran­ted in the case of a shor­ter or ca­len­dar-year-de­via­ting fis­cal year, it should be ad­ded that this dead­line does not end be­fore 30 June 2026 (§ 75 para. 3 sen­tence 3 Min­StG-E).