Small business regulation – national and European changes

January 2025
From 1 January 2025, the conditions for small business status under VAT law in Germany will change. In addition, there will also be a cross-border small business taxation (EU-KU regulation) within the European Union for the first time.

Transfer pricing

January 2025
Shortly before the end of the year, the Federal Ministry of Finance (BMF) published the revised ‘Administrative Principles for Transfer Pricing – Principles for the Adjustment of Income in Accordance with Section 1 of the German Foreign Tax Relations Act (AStG)’.

Annual Tax Act 2024

December 2024
The German Annual Tax Act 2024 (JStG 2024) was published in the German Federal Law Gazette on 5 December 2024.

Fourth Bureaucracy Relief Act

November 2024
The Fourth Bureaucracy Relief Act (Bürokratieentlastungsgesetz – BEG IV) was passed by the Bundestag on 26 September 2024.

New requirements for sustainability reporting by companies

The new EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive requires companies to report in detail on how they deal with social and environmental challenges in their annual financial statements in future.
The revised Directive (EU) 2022/2464 has been in force since the beginning of 2023 and must be transposed into national law by the EU member states by mid-2024. The new version is intended to give sustainability information the same status as a company’s financial information.

E-Invoices

Electronic invoices will be mandatory in the B2B sector in future. Corresponding VAT regulations are contained in the Growth Opportunities Act, which was published in the Federal Law Gazette on 27 March 2024.

With an e-invoice, invoice information is transmitted electronically, received automatically and processed further. This enables end-to-end digital processing from the creation of the invoice to the payment of the invoice amounts.