The National Customs and Tax Authority (NAV) has recently published its annual report – something of a tradition now – which summarises its activities over the past year. Looking through the many statistics, the picture that emerges is that the efficiency of NAV audits has increased in recent years.

The September amendment to the KATA Act has fundamentally restricted this form of taxation. According to current estimates, only 100,000 of the 460,000 KATA-paying entrepreneurs will continue to be able to stay in the system, the rest will be squeezed out. Meanwhile, the amendment affects not only those subject to KATA, but also those who employ them. Below is a hand-picked selection of these effects.

Because of its wealth protection features and favourable tax environment, trusts have become one of the most popular tools for family wealth planning. However, it matters what assets the settlor places in the trust– a mistake could easily undermine the favourable tax treatment of the trust.

Recently an increasing number of market players operating under the mandatory off-take regime (KÁT) have taken the opportunity to sell their renewable energy in the free market and thus, due to the current favourable market situation, sell their electricity at a much higher price than the subsidised price paid by the state. This flexibility, however, has disappeared overnight.

Two weeks ago, almost on the sly, a legislative amendment was adopted that could solve one of the “hit problems” of the real estate market: the complicated process of selling parking spaces in a condominium building. The changes came into force on 2 May, so it is now up to market players to put the new provisions into practice.

Some of the more exotic means of evidence that we typically think can only exist in movies or in serious criminal cases can also be surprisingly useful in business. In everyday life, too, you can prevent serious inconvenience by hiring a private investigator in time, or even by a well-directed lie detector test. Zsolt Bodnár and Dr. Béla Balla of Hori-Zone Security helped us to get to the bottom of the subject.

When the idea of selling the company matures in the mind of a business owner, there’s still a long way to go before the company can be successfully sold. There are many legal and tax matters to be seen to as part of the process – and these should not be left to the last minute. We discuss a few of these here.

This is the seventh year that we’ve been taking stock of the types of taxes in Hungary – and the multi-year trend is decidedly reassuring. The number of taxes has decreased to some extent almost every year. This year we’ve counted 51 types of tax, and at this point one might reasonably ask: is it realistic to expect even fewer taxes?