With the rise of home of­fice and flex­ible work­ing schemes, HR is in­creas­ingly con­fron­ted with a new set of chal­lenges: how to con­trol work-re­lated be­ha­viour, how to en­sure com­pli­ance with la­bour law stand­ards and how to meas­ure pro­ductiv­ity re­motely? While good lead­ers man­age to keep an eye on their em­ploy­ees’ pro­ductiv­ity without their phys­ic­al pres­ence and had done so even be­fore the cur­rent pan­dem­ic, oth­ers turn to ad­vanced IT-sys­tems, some go­ing as far as de facto in­tro­du­cing the al­gorithmic boss, as a tempt­ing solu­tion. But these sys­tems do touch upon em­ploy­ees’ pri­vacy, hu­man dig­nity and, of course, gen­er­al data pro­tec­tion is­sues and need to be handled with care.In this CMS Em­ploy­ment Snack Spe­cial, our la­bour law ex­perts and our data pro­tec­tion spe­cial­ists will nav­ig­ate you through these HR chal­lenges of re­mote work, bal­an­cing the need to con­trol with the em­ploy­ees’ right to pri­vacy.

New re­port­ing ob­lig­a­tions for cross-bor­der tax ar­range­ments  The amend­ment to Act No. 442/2012 on In­ter­na­tion­al As­sist­ance and Co­oper­a­tion in Tax Ad­min­is­tra­tion, which entered in­to force on 1 Ju­ly 2020, in­tro­duces a new tax re­port­ing ob­lig­a­tion. From our ex­per­i­ence, tax­pay­ers are still in­suf­fi­ciently fa­mil­i­ar with this new re­port­ing ob­lig­a­tion.The re­port­ing ob­lig­a­tion stems from the EU Dir­ect­ive (DAC6) and aims to pre­vent ag­gress­ive and soph­ist­ic­ated tax plan­ning and sav­ings struc­tures. In­form­a­tion dis­closed to tax au­thor­it­ies in in­di­vidu­al EU Mem­ber States is sub­sequently ex­changed with tax au­thor­it­ies with­in the EU. What to re­port? The re­port­ing ob­lig­a­tion cov­ers cross-bor­der tax ar­range­ments that pose a risk of un­desir­able tax op­tim­isa­tion. To de­term­ine wheth­er there is such a risk, it must be as­sessed wheth­er the ar­range­ment in­cludes some of the char­ac­ter­ist­ic fea­tures con­tained in the An­nex to the Act (Hall­marks). Even per­fectly le­git­im­ate trans­ac­tions that do not aim to op­tim­ise tax—such as cus­tom­ary cross-bor­der trans­ac­tions between group mem­bers, or re­or­gan­isa­tions—may trig­ger a re­port­ing ob­lig­a­tion. For ex­ample: One com­pany in the group uses stand­ard mod­el doc­u­ments for its activ­it­ies that do not need to be sig­ni­fic­antly ad­ap­ted to the spe­cif­ic situ­ation (such as mod­el con­tracts for fin­an­cing or rent),Pur­chase of a loss-mak­ing com­pany, an­d­Cap­it­al­isa­tion of re­ceiv­ables (debt /equity swap).The re­port­ing ob­lig­a­tion does not af­fect the trans­ac­tion’s tim­ing (i.e., the tax au­thor­ity does not have to ap­prove the trans­ac­tion). A pen­alty of up to EUR 30,000 may be im­posed for breach­ing the re­port­ing ob­lig­a­tion. Who should make the re­port? In prac­tice, it is usu­ally the tax­pay­er who must make the re­port. Leg­al or tax ad­visors may also ful­fil the re­port­ing ob­lig­a­tion on the tax­pay­er’s be­half. However, this does not hap­pen auto­mat­ic­ally. The tax­pay­er must first in­struct his ad­visers to ful­fil the re­port­ing ob­lig­a­tion and then re­lease them from the duty of con­fid­en­ti­al­ity. In some oth­er Mem­ber States, by con­trast, the tax­pay­er’s ad­visors are the ones af­fected by the re­port­ing ob­lig­a­tion and must re­port the trans­ac­tion without re­gard to the cli­ent’s wishes. By when? The law provides for the fol­low­ing dates. The de­cis­ive date is the date on which the trans­ac­tion was car­ried out: by 31 Janu­ary 2021 for trans­ac­tions car­ried out between 1 Ju­ly 2020 and 31 Decem­ber 2020,by 28 Feb­ru­ary 2021 for trans­ac­tions car­ried out between 25 June 2018 do 30 June 2020, an­dup to 30 days after trans­ac­tions car­ried out on or after 1 Janu­ary 2021. To Dos   We re­com­mend that you check your pre­vi­ous cross-bor­der trans­ac­tions and im­ple­ment an in­tern­al mon­it­or­ing and eval­u­ation sys­tem. In ad­di­tion, we re­com­mend im­ple­ment­ing in­tern­al pro­cesses to en­sure you com­ply with the re­port­ing ob­lig­a­tion in a timely man­ner.

New ob­lig­a­tions for com­pan­ies The year 2021 sees new com­pany law ob­lig­a­tions for com­pan­ies. We out­line some of these here.  Please note that some new ob­lig­a­tions need to be ful­filled im­me­di­ately and...