It was announced in November 2023 that the Electronic Declaration System (EDS) is switching to electronic identification tools and only a limited number of persons will be able to connect to EDS with the username and password assigned by the State Revenue Service (SRS). In response to taxpayers’ questions about the proposed changes, the SRS has issued a letter of explanation. Read on to find out more.

The tax reform in Latvia involved changing its corporate income tax (CIT) system from 1 January 2018. Six years after the new system was put in place, the Ministry of Finance (MOF) has evaluated the CIT reform and prepared an evaluation of the impact of the CIT reform in 2018–2023 and a proposed scenario of further action. This article explores the purpose, content and key findings of this evaluation.

Effective from 1 July 2024 amendments to the Notaries Act introduce rules on a civil partnership that will allow unmarried (including same-sex) couples to legally register their relationship and will give them social and economic protections. The amendments are to take effect together with amendments to the Personal Income Tax (PIT) Act and to the National Social Insurance Act, which extend PIT relief to persons having entered into a civil partnership.

The Ministry of Justice has come up with proposals for amending the Cabinet of Ministers’ Rule No. 1250 of 27 October 2009, “Stamp duty for entering ownership and mortgage rights on the land register”, which could take effect on 1 July 2024. The proposals are designed to enforce the Constitutional Court’s ruling No. 2022-03-01, which provides for extending social and economic protections to individuals who have duly entered into a civil partnership. The proposals have been sent to the Ministry of Finance for approval by 8 February 2024.

No website can function without cookies because they not only make your website functional but also help your company analyse what the visitors to the website are interested in. The National Data Office put together guidelines on cookies in 2022, but creating adequate cookie notices is still a big problem. This article will talk you through steps in creating a pop-up cookie notice on your website that complies with the General Data Protection Regulation.

Setting an arm’s length fee for your intragroup services is one of the transfer pricing (TP) challenges you might face. In 2018 Latvia decided to offer relief for low value-adding services (LVAS) to facilitate this process for companies. If certain criteria are met, LVAS can be analysed under a simplified procedure, meaning the service provider can apply a 5% markup on costs without undertaking a detailed benchmarking study. This article serves to remind you of a key requirement when it comes to taking the simplified approach to LVAS.

We have written before about what a social enterprise is and how it’s different from a business entity in the classical sense. Latvian law has put the Ministry of Welfare (MOW) in charge of fostering and developing social business activity in Latvia, monitoring the development of this sector, and promoting the operation of social enterprises.

We have written before about the popular artificial intelligence (AI) tool, ChatGPT, from both a functionality perspective and a data protection viewpoint. This article explores the latest trends in using generative AI (GenAI) and offers some AI business predictions.

We have informed our MindLink subscribers about the Pillar Two directive’s guidelines, looked at how implementing it could affect companies, and suggested how companies could get ready for the tax changes in good time. This article explores what’s new when it comes to passing the Pillar Two directive into Latvian law.

On 21 December 2023 the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) passed ruling C-288/22 on whether a public limited company’s board members are taxable persons for VAT purposes. This ruling is important because it explains what criteria must be met if a person is to be treated as carrying out an economic activity that forms the basis for paying VAT and what factors should be considered to determine whether someone is an independent taxable person.

To get ready for implementation of the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), in this article we are looking for the answers to why an external review of sustainability reports is necessary, what review procedures are expected, and how we can prepare ourselves for this change.

On 17 October 2023 the EU amended its blacklist of uncooperative tax havens that are subject to special taxation procedures. The blacklist now contains 16 jurisdictions, including Antigua and Barbuda, Belize, the Republic of Seychelles, and Russia. As 2023 saw the list being amended several times, there are certain tax aspects that may raise questions, yet national law does not always provide the answers. In this article we take a look at what the Ministry of Finance (MOF) and the State Revenue Service (SRS) think about the tax treatment of a Latvian-resident individual’s income from a substantial participation in a foreign company, including dividends from a blacklisted tax haven.

In today’s fast-changing employment space, the status of workers has become a subject for legal, social and economic debate. Recent years have seen significant changes to the labour market and to the traditional perceptions of employment, in particular as a result of Covid-19.

Have a great New Year! By tradition we put together information on the legislation and amendments affecting the calculation of personal income tax (PIT), national social insurance (NSI) contributions and solidarity tax (ST) on wages and salaries. This article explores the changes for 2024 so you can get ready for a successful financial year.

In our previous article we offered an introduction to aspects a family business needs to consider when it comes to operating in a different jurisdiction after relocating their company or setting up a new one. In this article we’ll be exploring the regulatory framework and legal structures as well as the tax regime, based on PwC guidelines.