News in brief, October 2020

DOMESTIC NEWS IN BRIEF

• The Personal Data Protection Office imposed a sanction of CZK 6 million for the repeated unsolicited distribution of commercial communications. It is the highest penalty for this type of wrongdoing imposed during the office’s existence.
• According to the CJEU’s judgement (C-422/19 and C-423/19),  creditors in general must accept cash to repay monetary debt.
• The government’s proposal to introduce a lump-sum tax for the self-employed passed through the first reading in the chamber of deputies. The annual income generated from business activity that can be subject to this regime may not exceed CZK 800,000. The lump-sum tax will allow self-employed persons to settle their income tax liability plus social security and health insurance obligations through one lump-sum payment, without having to complete three different prescribed forms. 
• An act abolishing the immovable property acquisition tax with a retrospective effect from December 2019 has been promulgated in the Collection of Laws. The financial administration has published several communications on this, as well as illustrative examples and a tax refund application template.
• A decree determining the extent of data and the method of their recording in the register kept pursuant to the Act on the Promotion of Sport has been published in the Collection of Laws (373/2020).
• A government decree on the amount of the general assessment base for 2019, the recalculation coefficient for adjusting the general assessment base for 2019, the reduction limits for determining the calculation base for 2021 and the basic amount of pension for 2021, and on increasing pensions in 2021 has been published in the Collection of Laws (381/2020). The data specified in the decree affect the amount of retirement pensions, the maximum assessment base for mandatory contributions to the social security scheme, and the minimum amount of social security and health insurance prepayments for self-employed persons.
• The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has negotiated a double taxation treaty and a related protocol between the Czech Republic and Ghana (38/2020).

FOREIGN NEWS IN BRIEF

• The European Commission has published its draft Digital Operational Resilience Act, aimed at enhancing the cybersecurity of financial institutions and strengthening their readiness against cyber-attacks. 
• The European Commission has decided to appeal the General Court's judgment on the Apple State aid case in Ireland before the Court of Justice of the European Union.
• In the European Parliament’s budget committee, EU lawmakers backed a bloc-wide charge on unrecycled plastics and called for a timetable for the introduction of digital and financial transaction taxes, among others, to help fund the EU budget.
• For changes to tax legislation in 2021, the Polish government is planning, among other things, to abolish the tax transparency of limited partnerships and some general partnerships, to introduce the obligation of certain corporate taxpayers to prepare and publish their tax policy and changes in transfer pricing policy, to extend the scope of transactions for which transfer pricing documentation will have to be prepared and to expand the documentation’s content.