Editorial

Dear Readers,

We kick off this March edition of our PKF magazine with a ruling by the Federal Constitutional Court in which the prevailing opinion on the written form requirement for contracts between related parties has been fundamentally changed. More positive news for taxpayers then follows in our second report in the Tax section; here we have put together for you the most important points in a new Federal Ministry of Finance circular on the expenses incurred for the maintenance and modernisation of buildings. According to this, there will be clear criteria in the future and, in many cases, it is likely that expenses will be more easily immediately deductible. Next up is the Key Issue report, in this edition, on the family asset pool company. Here, the model is presented with its advantages for estate planning. In the next edition of our magazine, a report on the choice of legal form will then follow. In a further report, there is a closer examination of usufruct as a structuring instrument that allows business owners to transfer assets early enough during their lifetimes and, in parallel, nevertheless ensure that they are provided for. The focus of this edition is the co-entrepreneur of a partnership (for the possible uses of usufruct for a sole proprietor please refer to Part I in the February edition of our magazine).

The positive news continues in our Legal section, too, at least when the issues are viewed from the perspective of the consumer. In future, for online orders there will be a kind of ‘emergency button’ and it will thus be just as easy to cancel an order as it is to place one. In a further article, we cover the currently much discussed active pension scheme, under which pensioners, upon reaching the statutory retirement age, will be able to supplement their earnings tax free. We describe how such an occupation can be structured in terms of employment law.

Our short reports are just as varied as the approaching Spring and they range from the possibility of adjusting profit transfer agreements and the specificities of special business assets, right through to partition in kind. Moreover, the topic of usufruct is addressed once again. Finally, we discuss the so-called one-fifth rule and breaches of the blocking period in the case of restructurings.

We wish you an interesting read.
Your PKF Team