The German Annual Tax Act 2024 (JStG 2024) was published in the German Federal Law Gazette on 5 December 2024. It is a typical ‘omnibus bill’: with around 130 individual measures across tax law, it amends a large number of laws. It responds to current requirements, implements EU directives and the results of case law, regulates technical issues and corrects editorial errors. It also simplifies tax regulations and thus helps to reduce bureaucratic hurdles. It contains many individual regulations that are not thematically linked and are mostly technical. However, it also contains some tax improvements for citizens.

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.