A specialised team, the “Tax Cobra” was officially established in June 2014 under the joint effort of the Czech General Tax Directorate, General Customs Directorate and the Police Unit for Detection of Fraud and Financial Criminality to fight against VAT fraud in the Czech Republic.Read More »
Category: Tax Knowledge
Luxembourg – increase of the VAT rates from 1 January 2015
On 15 September 2015, the Luxembourg Minister of Finance delivered his budget speech in which he announced that the Luxembourg VAT rates will be increased as follows:
- the standard rate from 15% to 17%;
- the intermediary rate from 12% to 14%; and
- the reduced rate from 6% to 8%
For further information please click here or contact our VAT expert in Luxembourg:
Laurent Grençon, Partner
Phone +352 49 4848 2060
Email: laurent.grencon@lu.pwc.com
Czech Virtual Currency – Another Distribution step
The Czech virtual currency, Czech Crown Coin (officially named by the authors “CZC”) which started the distribution of the pre-mined CZC in August 2014, is distributing a next set of 100.000 CZC to the first 1.000 EU based individuals who have registered and obtained the so called “myID” via the official website of CZC. This should increase the amount of CZC in the circulation as well as to support its usage and importance on the global level. Read More »
Hungary – Creative taxation: Internet Tax proposed
Earlier this week the Hungarian government submitted its proposed tax bill for 2015. One of the most interesting changes is the proposed introduction of the “Internet tax” that will be imposed on Internet service providers at a rate of HUF 150 (approx. USD 0.60) for every gigabyte of data or part thereof. By way of example, downloading a movie in HD quality (8.5 GB) would attract a tax charge of approx. USD 5 or the download of a 6GB game would have an additional cost of approx. USD 4 according to the original version of the proposal. You may expect that providers will try to recharge this cost to their customers, which makes surfing even more expensive.Read More »
Czech Republic – Third VAT Rate as of January 2015
As of January 2015, the Czech Republic plans to introduce a third VAT rate of 10% in addition to the existing standard VAT rate of 21% and the reduced rate of 15%. The new VAT rate will apply to drugs, books and baby food.
For further details please click here
Japan: new legislation to tax cross-border electronic services provided by non-established companies to come soon
Currently the B2C supply of services by a non-established company to Japanese customers is not subject to Japanese consumption tax (JCT). This provides competitive advantage to non-established service providers of electronic services compared to Japanese businesses. Since the JCT rate increased from 5% to 8%, with another increase to 10% estimated from 1 October 2015 this advantage is increasing further.Read More »
USA – tax regulation of bitcoins and other crypto currencies
IRS (internal revenue service), the US tax authority, published this year (March 25, 2014) a clear guidance (Notice 2014-21) on how the tax principles apply to transactions involving bitcoins and other crypto currencies. It is not a new law but just an interpretation of how the existing law should be applied to the new technology. It describes how Bitcoin and other crypto currencies transactions should be taxed. Read More »
CJEU: Services supplied by a non-EU headquarters to its EU branches are subject to VAT
I would like to share with you the latest news on a CJEU decision:
Services supplied by a non-EU headquarters to its EU branches are subject to VAT
The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) recently handed down a controversial decision in a significant case on whether VAT is chargeable on the recharge of the costs incurred by a non-EU headquarters to an EU branch which is a part of a VAT group.
For further details please click here
Belgium – Bitcoin Trading Exempt from VAT … for now
In a recent decision issued for an online Bitcoin trading platform, the Belgian tax authorities have confirmed that the trading of Bitcoins and other virtual currencies is similar to the activity of an intermediary and should therefore fall under the exemption included in the Belgium VAT Code for “negotiation concerning deposits, current accounts, debts, cheques and other negotiable instruments but excluding debt collection” . As a result, the activities should be at this moment treated as exempt from VAT. Read More »
Germany – Reverse Charge for some metal products as from 1 October 2014
In order to fight against tax fraud there is a change of the tax liability for number of metal products as from 1 of October. Reverse charge is applicable for the products in the list below. Therefore it is of utmost importance to check all the incoming invoices for this type of products as incorrectly charged VAT by the supplier will be not credited by the tax authorities. In case of a VAT audit such input VAT will have to repay back with additional late payment interest as well as possible penalties.
Michaela Merz 