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Latest news - December 2016

Last month’s tax and legal news in a few sentences.

  • The Chamber of Deputies approved an amendment to the Act on Accounting, introducing the non-financial reporting duty for selected corporations. Liable entities will have to report information about their approach to the environment, social and employee affairs, human rights, the fight against corruption and bribery in their annual reports or in separate reports. Although this new reporting duty is primary directed at large entities, it may also affect companies that are not large but part of groups of corporations performing consolidation.
     
  • Calls to apply for funds from the Enterprise and Innovation for Competitiveness Operational Programme were gradually announced during the course of October and November; in particular calls for participation in the ICT and Shared Services, Innovation, Potential, Energy Saving, and Application programmes. It will be possible to submit applications for subsidies continuously from mid-December, except for the ICT and Shared Services programme, which has already been open for application submission. Detailed information about individual calls and the deadlines for submitting applications are available on the website of the Ministry of Industry and Trade and the API agency. We will be happy to discuss this with you in detail.
     
  • Decree No. 366/2016 Coll., determining foreign meal allowance basic rates for 2017, has been published in the Collection of Laws.
     
  • The Economic and Financial Affairs Council (ECOFIN) will meet in Brussels on 6 December 2016. Ministers will discuss a motion to extend the Anti-Tax Avoidance Directive 2 by new rules that prevent hybrid mismatches between the EU member states and non-EU countries. A hybrid mismatch is understood to be the different treatment of a certain transaction or an entity in various jurisdictions, resulting in an unintentional reduction of tax liability.
     
  • On 30 November 2016, the Ministry of Finance submitted a draft government decree amending Government Decree No. 243/2013 Coll., on investment funds’ investment activities and investment fund management techniques, as amended by Government Decree No. 11/2014 Coll., for comments to other ministries.
     
  • The European Commission has published a European Taxpayers’ Code, providing rules governing the behaviour and relationships between taxpayers and tax administrations. This document should be considered a model to follow.
     
  • The European Commission has published a series of measures to modernise VAT for EU cross-border e-commerce. The measures should help customers and especially newly established small and medium businesses sell and purchase goods and services online.