News in brief, June 2021

DOMESTIC NEWS IN BRIEF

• Until the end of June 2021, the government has extended the part of the Antivirus programme concerning employers whose employees are ordered into quarantine or isolation.
• The Chamber of Deputies has confirmed the original wording of an amendment to the Act on the Czech National Bank, aiming to allow the central bank to respond on time and when necessary to macroeconomic risks arising on the real estate and mortgage markets and possibly violating financial stability.
• The financial administration has disclosed information about the results of its inspections of transfer pricing in 2020. A total of 249 inspections were performed, resulting in additionally assessed income tax of CZK 1.4 billion and an increase in the tax base of CZK 7.9 billion. Between 2014-2020, the financial administration carried out 2,431 inspections, resulting in additionally assessed tax of CZK 4.5 billion and an increase in the tax base of CZK 46.9 billion.
• The Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs has submitted a pension reform proposal to the government. The ministry claims that the reform enjoys support across political parties, at the OECD level, from domestic experts and pro-senior organisations. The proposal follows three basic priorities: fairness, clarity and sustainability.
• An amendment to the Act on Employment, regulating the Kurzarbeit mechanism, has been approved by the deputies and is now heading to the Senate. It should help in time of crisis when employees cannot be allocated work for objective reasons. In such a case, the state will partly compensate employers for wage compensations paid by them to their employees. The amendment aims to help overcome such crises while maintaining jobs.

FOREIGN NEWS IN BRIEF

• The Conference of the Parties to the Multilateral Convention to Implement Tax Treaty Related Measures to Prevent Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (MLI) approved an opinion that sets out a series of guiding principles for addressing questions about the interpretation and implementation of the MLI. Those principles were drawn from public international law, the design of the MLI itself, and its drafting history.
• The OECD has published Tax Policy Reforms 2021: Special Edition on Tax Policy during the COVID-19 Pandemic, which provides an overview of the tax measures introduced during the COVID-19 crisis across almost 70 jurisdictions.
• The fourth edition of the Tax policies in the EU 2020 survey examines how member states' tax systems perform in terms of the EU’s priorities such as promoting sustainable investment or supporting job creation and employment. New elements of this year’s edition include discussions on tax competition, the design and distribution of the overall tax mix, the sustainability of tax systems in a changing world, and measuring effective tax rates on corporate income.