On 24 October 2019, the German coalition government issued a joint press release announcing that the proposed reforms to the German Real Estate Transfer Tax Act (RETTA) would be delayed until the first half of 2020. This delay was caused by a need for additional time to further consider any necessary changes after leading German real estate industry associations presented arguments at a public consultation on 14 October 2019.
At that time, the parties failed to reach a solution in the first half of 2020 and progress had since halted.
Now, efforts have started to adopt the original draft with few amendments despite the requests for changes. In the following, we briefly summarise the possible outcome to recap and highlight the proposed amendments which could be enacted mid or end of April to become effective by 1 July this year.
