This article by Rudolf Kettel from MSI's Nuremberg based member firm Fuerst und Partner GmbH provides insight into the so-called inbound structures for real estate located in Germany. This means foreign or domestic property companies where both domestic and foreign natural persons participate in. These companies usually have revenues subject to domestic tax from the real estate leased in Germany.
Additional tax-related links also exist in the VAT and real estate transfer tax areas. Furthermore German Business Tax, donation and inheritance tax could cause problems.
In the last few years, fundamental new regulations arose from case-law- and legislation-related decisions. Not only must the case-law of the German Supreme Court responsible for tax issues, the Federal Finance Court, be observed, but also the case-law of the European Court of Justice.
In addition to that, fundamental reforms also arose from the GAAR- BEPS project of the OECD and the ATAD directive of the EU, which had to be implemented by the German legislature.
