In mid-July, severe storms hit large parts of Germany and caused enormous damage. The regions worst affected were in Rhineland-Palatinate and North Rhine-Westphalia, but also in Bavaria and Saxony. The tax authorities have reacted to this disaster by means of the introduction of a variety of equitable regulations. This should at least mitigate the financial damage caused to affected businesses. In addition, the enormous willingness of companies to help with the disaster relief is to be promoted by refraining from taxing supplies carried out free of charge and the adjustment, for a limited period of time, of input VAT in accordance with sec. 15a of the German VAT Act.

The main objective of the OSS procedure is explicitly to provide taxable persons with a solution that is as lean and unbureaucratic as possible. However, according to information from DATEV, this simplification will not be available in the foreseeable future, at least not for existing registrations. Corrections to supplies and services that were made prior to a taxable person’s use of the OSS procedure should only be taken into account in the procedure where they have been declared initially. In practice, however, this would involve a disproportionately high effort.

In sec. 2.2 para. 2 sentence 7 of the German VAT Circular (UStAE), the Federal Ministry of Finance (BMF) has so far assumed that a member of a supervisory board performs his or her activities on a self-employed basis. In its latest letter dated July 8, 2021, the BMF has now changed its view. In doing so it has adopted the latest case law of the ECJ and BFH. Accordingly, a supervisory board member is now not considered to be self-employed if he or she receives a fixed remuneration or a remuneration whose variable component does not reach ten percent of the total remuneration. These principles also apply to members of other supervisory bodies, but not to members of management bodies. The new regulation is to be applied to all open cases. However, the Ministry has granted a transitional phase until December 31, 2021.