The Hungarian Government introduced two special taxes from 1 May 2020 in order to tackle the financial effects of the coronavirus disease: the special tax on credit institutions and the tax on commercial chains. According to the official communication of the Ministry of Finance „the goal is that the burden of these taxes – that contribute to the improvement of the balance of public finances – are borne not by the consumers but by the actors that are capable of such.”

Hungary announced and successfully notified to the European Commission a HUF 50 billion (approximately EUR 140 million) aid scheme in April 2020. The subsidy to improve competitiveness has been designed to help the medium-sized and large enterprises that are active in the manufacturing or business services sector that face difficulties due to loss of income and liquidity resulting from the economic impact of the pandemic.

The Hungarian Parliament has started the discussion of the bill that is implementing the provisions of Directive (EU) 2018/1808 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 14 November 2018 (Audiovisual Media Services Directive) (the “Directive”). According to the Directive, Member States must ensure their compliance with the Directive by 19 September 2020.

At the end of March 2020, the Hungarian Government has submitted to the Parliament a bill on the arrangement of the ownership of properties affected by land use right of a producing co-operative (in Hungarian: termelőszövetkezet) and on the amendment of other acts of land-related subject.

The independent administrative and labour courts ceased to exist in Hungary as of 31 March 2020, and in the future, administrative and employment legal actions will be brought before regional courts. All cases that were in the sole jurisdiction of the Budapest-Capital Administrative and Labour Courts have been transferred to the sole jurisdiction of the Budapest-Capital Regional Court.

The Hungarian Government introduced changes in procedural related regulations on 31 March 2020 by adopting Government Decree No. 74/2020 (III.31.). These newly introduced amendments affect civil law court procedures.

Protecting workplaces and businesses is of foremost importance amidst fighting COVID-19. In order to so, Hungary – like most of other developed countries – also introduced numerous emergency tax measures in the past few weeks, as follows:

With regard to the state of emergency the Hungarian Government has passed several employment related laws. According to Government Decree no. 47/2020, the provisions of the Labour Code shall be applied with several modifications during the term of state of emergency caused by the coronavirus pandemic. The purpose of the modifications is to make the employment regulations more flexible and to enable the employers and employees to adapt to the challenges caused by the pandemic.

In the third week of March 2020, the prime minister of Hungary has announced that certain measures will be issued by the Government to ease the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The currently running Public Administration and Public Service Development Strategy 2014-2020 program has set high goals for the processes of public administration, including organization, consistency, professionally trained staff, cost-effectiveness and competitive service fees. To reach these goals, the debate of a legislative package aiming to simplify the operation of government offices started in November 2019 in the Hungarian Parliament. The package was accepted in December 2019, with the majority of the changes getting into effect starting in March 2020, and the remainder coming in September 2020 and January 2021.

In response to the new trends in the labour market, the rules on training grant financed from the Hungarian National Employment Fund are changing in 2020. Favorable amendments will make the process of applying for and using this grant more flexible and as a new option, grant may also be applied for job keeping purposes.

In the framework of the Hungarian ‘Public Administration and Public Service Development Strategy 2014-2020’ a single building authority system was introduced as of 1 March 2020.

In its judgement of 2 March 2020, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) established that Member States are free to impose registration obligation for foreign suppliers and levy penalties on foreign entities for incompliance with the obligation, even if resident entities are exempt from that obligation. The judgement, however, also contains that the Hungarian legislation is disproportionate and as such, it is incompatible with the EU rules.

Hungarian online invoice data reporting obligation is set to be extended practically to all invoices by 2021 in two steps. Companies – for some as a totally new requirement – should be ready to allocate development capacity in order to comply with the reporting on time.

In the framework of the ‘Digital Court Project’, a new online system was launched by the courts as of 1 January 2020.

The National Competitiveness Council held a meeting on 4 February 2020 about the possible future changes of the local business tax.

The Hungarian Parliament approved certain amendments to the Hungarian Corporate Income Tax Act in July 2019.

The Hungarian tax authority prepares the personal income tax returns for everyone it has employer information about, whether they are employees, primary producers, private individuals liable for the payment of VAT or individual entrepreneurs.