Sec. 2 para. 2 no. 2 of the German VAT Act regarding the requirements for a consolidated VAT group is formulated more restrictively than the underlying art. 11 of the VAT Directive. Therefore, entrepreneurs often refer to the EU law which is, in many cases, often more favorable for them. Although the tax court Saarland rejected the direct application of art. 11 of the VAT Directive in the particular case, entrepreneurs should continue to refer to this regulation until the Federal Fiscal Court clarifies this issue.

If the requirements, according to the wording of a national VAT exemption regulation, of sec. 4 of the German VAT Act are not met, VAT exemptions will usually be denied by the German tax authorities. The European law is not taken into consideration. The Federal Court of Finance repeatedly directly applied a VAT Directive tax exemption regulation, in this case to supplies carried out by private hospitals. Supplies carried out by private hospitals are not subject to VAT, independent of their certification with respect to social security law.

The Federal Ministry of Finance has comprehensively reviewed the 1995 GoBS and the 2001 GDPdU. Both have now been amended and merged into one document, namely the GoBD (principles of duly keeping and retaining books, records and documents in electronic form as well as regarding data access). The review was overdue. What is new here is that the GoBD noticeably refers to VAT. In light of the above and due to the growing significance of complete and effective tax compliance, companies should check the impact of the new GoBD on their internal VAT related processes.