Nuno de Oliveira Garcia reflects on the maintenance of extraordinary contributions in 2025 | Jornal de Negócios

Joint audits in the context of mutual assistance: procedural aspects and taxpayers’ rights and obligations

The Supreme Court has established ‘cassational’ doctrine regarding the treatment under value-added tax of intra-group transfers of shares by mixed holding companies. It is confirmed that the intra-group transfer of shares constitutes a financial activity that cannot generally be classified as a management support activity. Likewise, it is acknowledged that an intra-group transfer of shares may not be subject to said tax when it involves the indirect transfer of an independent economic unit, subjecting such exclusion to the circumstances surrounding the transaction.

Whether or not the purchasers of residential apartments and commercial premises take on, by way of subrogation, the planning obligations arising from a land readjustment procedure, has always been a conundrum on account of the economic and social impact that an affirmative answer would have on the end recipients of housing. The Supreme Court has yet to rule on this matter.

The package of tax measures included in Royal Decree-law 7/2026, of 20 March, consists of various incentives in the field of direct taxation of individuals and companies to reduce dependence and promote energy savings and efficiency, electric mobility, and support for self-consumption and investment in renewables. Moreover, it includes a set of extraordinary and temporary measures applicable to energy taxation and indirect taxation aimed at reducing the tax burden on products particularly affected by rising prices. Lastly, certain changes are made to various local taxes.

In its Judgment of 26 February 2026, in Case C-524/23, the Court of Justice of the European Union has ruled that the Kingdom of Belgium has failed to fulfil its obligations under Directive (EU) 2016/1164, by failing to adopt the statutory, regulatory and administrative provisions necessary to ensure taxpayers’ right to a deduction of the tax paid by controlled foreign companies from the corporate income tax liability of the taxpayer.

The Supreme Court rules that the requirement of having at least one full-time employee for an undertaking engaged in real estate leasing to be regarded as carrying on business may be deemed fulfilled by way of an associated company when such is functionally part and parcel of the business activity of the group of companies as a whole.

The new update to the OECD Model Tax Convention on Income and on Capital incorporates regulatory adjustments, interpretative clarifications and additional criteria in response to recent developments in international taxation. It addresses relevant issues relating, among other things, cross-border teleworking, the exploration and exploitation of natural resources, transfer pricing aspects of financial transactions or information received through exchange of information.

Recently, the Tax Agency’s departments have been altered in order to, among other things, adapt their roles and responsibilities to new forms of tax-related administrative cooperation —covered by Council Directive (EU) 2021/514 (DAC7) and transposed into the Taxation Act —. Among these, we highlight in this commentary the importance of joint audits, recalling their main characteristics and analysing some of the problems that their implementation may pose

All taxpayers subject to wealth tax, both residents and non-residents, are in a comparable situation and must therefore be able to apply the combined cap of Article 31(1) LIP, the existence of a real or personal obligation being irrelevant for the purposes of the comparability analysis, since the determining factor is the nature and purpose of this tax device, as well as its content.