Editorial

Dear Readers,

For a long time, the EU dominated the sustainability field and played offensively with the backfield trio of ESG reporting, the EU Taxonomy and the Supply Chain Law. Towards the end of last year, there were admittedly various requests to change the tactics. Now, however, the EU has parked its bus far beyond that and has gone on the defensive. In the Key Issue report in this edition of the PKF Magazine you can read about the EU Commission’s so-called ‘Omnibus Regulation’ and the proposals on how this will reduce the scope of both reporting companies and disclosures for sustainability reporting and, moreover, how everything will be postponed as well.

Our first report in the Legal section is about the interdependence of two tax laws and the question as to whether the new rules on the definition of a group in income tax legislation also apply to inheritance and gift taxes. In our second contribution we take a look at the offsetting of losses. In the course of this we consider the development in terms of the amounts in recent years and we examine the conditions for offsetting gains and losses for different types of income.

In our Legal section, we start with a report on the modernisation of postal law. Against the background of extended notional delivery times, we leave it up to you to decide whether modernisation is a reasonable description. In our second contribution we turn to a topic that is usually unpleasant, namely, customers not paying on time. Important aspects are presented in detail here and taking these into account should make for successful payment reminders and receivables collection. The topic of the third report is the signing of annual financial statements. The focus here is on questions as to what the form of the signature should be and how many partners or managing directors need to sign.

In our short reports section, once again we have put together a varied bunch of fascinating topics. Here we kick off with the issue of whether or not a purchase price that is too high can be penalised with double taxation; moreover, we set out what you should bear in mind so that maintenance and modernisation costs do not turn into acquisition costs. Furthermore, there is a discussion about how to calculate the interest-rate advantage that needs to be subjected to gift tax, and then whether or not league relegation can lead to the termination of a coach’s employment relationship. Finally, notes on what a holding company needs to pay attention to if the aim is to claim a tax deduction not just for a part of its business expenses but, instead, the full amount round off the information that we present in a compact format.

We wish you an interesting read. 
Your PKF Team