tag: tax legislation

In 2016, when local authorities had been able to levy municipal taxes for more than a year already, we summarised the lessons that had been learned up to then from this newest genre of local taxes. At the time, we were waiting with bated breath to see what the future would bring, that is; to see just how creative local governments would get in thinking up new taxes. So what did ever happen to the ‘kitsch tax’, the ‘pony tax’ and all those other local levies? Now that a few years have passed, the time has come for us to once again peer into the weird and wonderful world of municipal taxes.

Social and economic changes in 2022 have broken a long downward trend recently, with the number of tax categories increasing from 51 to 59 last year. We give you the latest lowdown.

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.

While there were still as many as 60 types of tax in Hungary five years ago, this number was reduced to 54 by the end of last year. This process was interrupted by the recent introduction of crisis taxes. It remains to be seen whether this trend will now be reversed.

It has long been a problem that the tax authority refuses to refund to a supplier the VAT that has already paid by him, even if the customer has not paid the gross purchase price at all. However, in a recent ruling, the European Court of Justice has clearly ruled that if the claim has become definitively unrecoverable, the Hungarian tax authority NAV is also required to refund the VAT on that claim to the seller. This decision now also allows other affected taxpayers to request a refund of the VAT on their unrecoverable receivables within a maximum of six months.

A recently released NAV guidance gives a list of those signs that could indicate that a security firm is involved in VAT fraud. The list will certainly help companies that accept invoices from such security firms, but it’s still a pity that the guidance wasn’t issued ten years earlier.

It has been clear for some time that Hungary is in breach of EU law by not allowing the refunding of VAT on bad debts. The fact that cases of Hungarian taxpayers have now been brought before the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has forced Hungarian lawmakers to move on the issue. While the package of tax amendments submitted last week provides an opportunity to reclaim such VAT, in certain cases – due to the planned administrative restrictions – it will still only be possible to enjoy this right with reference to EU law.

60, 59, 58, 55… this is how the number of taxes has changed in Hungary over the past 4 years. The trend is certainly encouraging, but behind the figures there are some more complex phenomena at play.