Independent share transfers on the same day

Several share transfers carried out on the same day may be independent gifts, which are accordingly taxable separately.

A father transferred shares in three corporations to his son on the same day. The tax office therefore assumed a single gift and granted only the standard exemption of 85 % for gift tax purposes for all three companies due to the excessively high level of administrative assets in the case of a GmbH. This was contradicted by the Münster Fiscal Court, which classified the transfer for several reasons as three separate gifts, each of which is to be taxed separately. The decisive factor for the question of whether a single gift exists is the intention of the parties involved. A uniform intention to make a gift cannot be inferred solely from the transfer on the same day. Moreover, the companies were neither legally nor economically intertwined, had different shareholders and were transferred with different conditions. The contracts also contained withdrawal clauses that were independent of each other.