Tax News Hungary - New Corona-measures

The Hungarian Government announced its second phase of economic recovery measures today, on 7th April 2020. The for entrepreneus most relevant measures will be described in the following. Please note that the details to these measures are missing at the moment. As soon as the necessary legal details will be published we will inform you in a new, detailed issue of our Tax News.

• A Hungarian version of ’Kurzarbeit’ (working in a reduced time-frame) that was already successfully introduced in other countries will be allowed  for 3 months: The Government will take over the burden of paying a certain (yet undetermined) part of employees’ salaries in the next 3 months ’up to a justified amount’ under certain conditions. What has been announced so far is that the employees would receive 70 percent of their normal salary with the Government’s aid, if they are working less hours than normal, and they are not working from home. The aid will be available to those employers who suffered at least 15-50 percent of decrease in their workload.
• 40 percent of salary aid to engineers and R&D specialists: 40 percent of the salaries of those employees who are engineers or work in the field of R&D will be covered by the Government in the next 3 months, regardless of whether they are working shorter hours or not.
• Government-funded online trainings for employees who became redundant: Those employees who cannot be utilized by their employees due to closed business can  apply for immediately starting trainings to acquire new skills, e.g. in the field of IT. The Government will cover 95 percent of the cost of these trainings.
• New funds for investments in technology: New Government funds will be created to support companies who do not fire their employees and wish to invest into new environment-friendly technology.
• Other new employment and tax-related administrative facilitation measures:
  
  • the VAT recovery process will become faster (30 or 20 days)
  • certain payment facilitation options will become easier to request e.g. payment in instalments, payment extension, tax reduction;
  • in the EKAER system an exemption will be given from the obligation to provide security, and automatic refunding will become possible;
  • the deadline to submit the yearly financial statements and the relating tax returns will be postponed until 30 September 2020;
  • the social contributions tax will be decreased by 2 percent as of 1 July 2020;
  • the social contributions tax on SZÉP card benefits will be decreased to 4 percent until 30 June 2020, and the threshold of favorably taxed SZÉP card benefits will be raised from HUF 450,000 to HUF 800,000;
  • no local tourismus tax will be payable until 31 December 2020;
  • employees on unpaid leave will remain insured in the Hungarian social security system;

electronic copies of sick leave documents can be submitted.