Tax Payers
In 2019, a total of 4.1 million tax payers were liable to pay trade tax; 2.5 million, or 61%, of these trade tax payers had a base tax amount of zero. The total base tax amount was 13.2 billion euros. Among the 4.1 million trade tax payers, 197,267 businesses (4.8%) comprised several establishments, adding up to a total of 741,813 establishments. Tax groups accounted for 0.8% of the trade tax payers. In accordance with the rules of the Corporation Tax Act, controlling units and integrated units that have joined together in a tax group are jointly assessed for trade tax.
Legal forms
An analysis of the legal forms shows that individual traders contributed only 13.4% to the total base tax amount, although they represented 56.7% of all trade tax payers. Partnerships represented 11.3% of the tax payers, but contributed 28.1% to the base tax amount. In 2019, 30.6% of the trade tax payers were corporations, which contributed more than half (55.5%) of the total base tax amount. Other legal persons accounted for just 1.4% of the tax payers, but they contributed 2.9% to the base tax amount. Other legal persons are, for example, associations without legal capacity, institutions and foundations as well as business establishments under public law and savings banks.
Results
The discrepancies between the legal forms may be explained by the fact that the business gains and profits of individual traders tend to be much lower than those of partnerships and corporations, and that a higher tax-free allowance is granted to individual traders and partnerships. The higher tax-free allowance takes into account that, unlike corporations, individual traders and partnerships are not allowed to reduce their profits by deducting the managing directors' remuneration.
In 2019, a base tax amount of zero was determined for 60.1% of the trade tax payers. 25.6% (of all tax payers) had negative business profits, 13.7% had no business profits and 21.4% recorded positive business profits. In the latter cases, there was no base tax amount because the business profits were offset by sufficient tax-free allowances.
The tax payers covered by the trade tax statistics 2019 achieved total profits of 456 billion euros and losses of 111 billion euros. The deductions for losses carried forward amounted to approximately 31 billion euros. The tax-free allowances claimed by all trade tax payers totalled 37 billion euros.