BERLIN, Nov 7 (Reuters) – German industry has called for a minimum global corporate tax deferral of at least a year until 2025 to give businesses more time to prepare for the crisis. current situation, according to a position paper released by industry association BDI on Monday.
“The ambitious timetable for applying the minimum tax as early as 2024 is unrealistic in the context of the enormous complexity of the associated new regulations,” BDI said.
The reshuffle, the biggest overhaul of cross-border tax rules in a generation, agreed to by nearly 140 countries last year, aims to better take into account the emergence of big digital companies, such as Apple. and Amazon, which can register profits in low-tax countries.
The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which piloted the global minimum tax, said in July that the new rules were set to come into force in 2024.
BDI said implementing the new rules and preparing IT processes would take a lot of time and resources for companies, calling for a simplification of the process, transitional arrangements and a postponement until at least 2025.
He also rejected the idea that Germany could implement the minimum tax without the legislation being passed across the European Union.
The governments of the EU’s five biggest economies, including Germany, said last month they would implement the new tax rules next year by “all legal means possible” if Hungary does not lift its opposition at EU level.
BDI said going it alone would hurt the competitiveness of the German economy as it would generate costs for German parent companies. (Reporting by Maria Sheahan, editing by Rachel More and Ed Osmond)
