An approved law regulating various areas of so-called hard Brexit passed the legislative process. Following the development of the situation, it will be promulgated in the Collection of Laws at the end of March unless a UK-EU agreement is agreed or Brexit is postponed.
Focus on what's hot
Over half a million legal entities recorded in the Commercial Register had the obligation to record their ultimate beneficial owners (“UBO”) in the Register of Ultimate Beneficial Owners Information (“Register”) by 1 January 2019. However, at the end of the year only 65,000 of them registered their UBO.
On Tuesday, 12 March, the Chamber of Deputies approved an amendment to the Income Taxes Act, which also amends rules for applying R&D tax relief. Amendments proposed by the Senate of the Czech Republic were not accepted. Currently, the amendment still awaits the President’s signature, but we expect the new rules to be effective from 1 April 2019.
For a number of companies and consumers, 25 May 2018 was a revolutionary milestone in terms of personal data importance. Partly given the significant attention paid by the media, consumers and organisations started recognising their respective rights and obligations. The regulation, which was approved in April 2016 and came into effect two years later, resulted in a number of changes in the functioning of the affected organisations. What changes were they? What is the public perception of the GDPR? Has anything changed in practice at all?
In cases in which the property owner enables the lessee to perform technical improvement on the property and to subsequently depreciate the improvement made, while no compensation is provided upon the lease agreement’s termination, the property owner generates gratuitous income. The property owner is obliged to tax such income as part of his/her tax base. Pursuant to the amendment to the relevant legislation effective from 1 July 2017 it was possible to perform and depreciate such technical improvements both for lessees and any authorised property users (such as sub-lessees). However, the legislation did not provide any guidance on how to treat technical improvement upon the termination of sub-lease agreements.
Holiday compensation and its utilisation as a research and development (“R&D”) deduction has been a widely debated issue in recent years. The General Financial Directorate refused for such compensation to be utilised as part of the R&D deduction; on the other hand, a strong opinion of legal experts existed upholding the legitimacy of the deduction. Therefore, it was evident that the matter had to be decided in court.
For the purpose of determining the real estate acquisition tax base, a taxpayer has the possibility to choose either the price determined by an expert valuation or the so-called guide value (“směrná hodnota”) as the comparative tax value. The Financial Administration has so far argued that the taxpayer can no longer change the selected option once the tax return is submitted, for example by filing an additional tax return. However, the Municipal Court in Prague has now expressed the view that the taxpayer may change its decision until the tax is assessed.
