From a letter sent to the Lower House of Parliament on May 28, 2020, it appears that the government has further consulted with employer and employee organizations in response to Emergency package 2.0.
More than two months ago the government announced a number of emergency measures in its ‘Jobs and Economy emergency package’ letter to the Lower House of Parliament dated March 17, 2020. These measures were intended to mitigate the first acute and widespread shock resulting from the coronavirus and the crisis measures introduced in this respect. On May 20, 2020 the government announced – once again in a letter to the Lower House of Parliament – that various measures in the first emergency package (Emergency package 1.0) would be extended and supplemented with new measures (Emergency package 2.0).
By letter to the Lower House of Parliament dated May 20, 2020, the Minister of Social Affairs and Employment announced that the Temporary emergency bridging measure to retain jobs (Tijdelijke noodmaatregel overbrugging voor behoud van werkgelegenheid; NOW) as it applies to the period March through May 2020 would be amended for a third time.
On May 18, 2020 the ‘Building Blocks for a Better Tax System’ package was published. The reports, which together contain more than 1000 pages of text, have resulted in 169 detailed policy options on a large number of taxes, which can be used by a new government.
The onset of the Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in global business and economic disruptions with a direct impact on the transfer prices of multinational enterprises. Dianne Berry, Marcus Chadderton, and Eduard Sporken experts within our KPMG Global Transfer Pricing Services team, put their knowledge and expertise into an article for Bloomberglaw.com to look at what MNEs need to be doing to manage their transfer pricing arrangements.
As a result of the corona crisis, setting an investment on hold and holding the capital raised for it may occur more frequently. If the capital is held in expectation of a new investment, we believe it is possible to avoid a VAT deduction limitation.
In its judgment of May 15, 2020, the Supreme Court upheld the decision by the Court of Appeals. The building in question was leased on a VAT-exempt basis. As a result of this judgment, parties will be confronted with a higher amount of non-recoverable VAT.
The previous updated policy statement has now been replaced by the policy statement of May 6, 2020, in which the approvals in the previous policy statement are supplemented with new approvals, including with regard to the corona tax reserve, the normative salary and the work-related costs rules.
On May 7, 2020 the Court of Justice of the European Union (‘CJEU’) rendered judgment in the Dong Yang Electronics case (C-547/18). The case concerned whether a subsidiary may, for VAT purposes, constitute a fixed establishment, and, if so, how the service provider must determine whether it performs its services to the parent company or the fixed establishment.
Not only are companies assessing the impact of the multitude of changing circumstances created by COVID-19, they are also having to sort through a host of new laws and regulations to determine how they might be affected. In most countries, the tax authorities have responded quickly to the changing circumstances of people and business by introducing relief measures such as deferred tax filings to reduce the pressures on businesses, tax-rate reductions, and VAT exemptions.