The highest German tax court recently published a new decision concerning the VAT treatment of share deals and suggested that a transfer of shares could be a non-taxable transfer of a going concern (and thus potentially allow input VAT deduction) if the transfer was rendered from one VAT group to another.
This decision is important for companies that envisage transferring shares in subsidiaries, since they can save significant amounts of input VAT for transaction costs if certain conditions are met and they properly draft the VAT wording of the underlying SPA.
Source: bakermckenzie.com