The German transport ministers’ conference announced that discrimination is no longer tolerable against sea and inland ports and airports, as well as the entire German logistics and forwarding sector. The discrimination is caused by the current tax levying process in Germany for import VAT compared to neighbouring countries. To eliminate the disadvantages for German companies, they talked about harmonizing the import VAT with the neighbouring countries.
Specifically, the central association of German seaport operators – ZDS is in favour of this additional resolution by a state ministers’ conference.
Recently, both the state finance ministers, as well as the state economics ministers discussed about the optimization of the tax levying mechanism.
Now, the state transport ministries believe that the current mechanism impairs Germany’s competitiveness and deprives the German tax authorities of potential tax income.
[smlsubform prepend=”GET THE SAFETY4SEA IN YOUR INBOX!” showname=false emailtxt=”” emailholder=”Enter your email address” showsubmit=true submittxt=”Submit” jsthanks=false thankyou=”Thank you for subscribing to our mailing list”]
Moreover, ZDS pushes on the tax levying mechanism for importation VAT to be reformed as fast as possible.
As the annual report of German Customs published, in 2018 about 59.4 billion euros were levied in import VAT compared to 55.9 billion euros in 2017.
The offsetting model, which is favoured by both those involved commercially and that was also identified as the most comprehensive solution by the responsible federal/states working group, should therefore be quickly implemented.
This is the only way to counteract the acute competitive disadvantage for the importers, forwarders, air- and seaports located in Germany. In addition, both tax and Customs revenue will be diverted from abroad to Germany.
