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.

IT systems are evolving rapidly: cloud-based solutions, artificial intelligence and automated processes are all making businesses, organizations, and communities more and more efficient. Compared to the 2 billion internet users in 2015, at the end of 2017 there were approximately 3.8 billion internet users worldwide. It is estimated that by 2022 there will be 6 billion internet users (75% of the population that will grow to 8 billion by then) and by 2030 they will reach 7.5 billion (90% of the projected 8.5 billion population). This increase of usage of IT technologies, and the ever growing number of internet users naturally mean more cyber-attacks and hacking activity, that come with a price: much more attention than usual has to be paid to IT security.

A new act on vocational training entered into force on 1 January 2020.

As of 1 January 2020, a new tax allowance is available under the Hungarian Personal Income Tax Act, which provides for that mothers raising four or more children might be exempted from the payment of personal income tax.

Online sales in the EU are estimated to worth €550 billion a year – €96 billion of which is cross-border. The new EU VAT system for e-commerce aims to give simpler value added tax (VAT) rules and administration for businesses and measures for Member States to tackle VAT fraud related to e-commerce.

The most relevant provisions of the act on the amendment of certain justice laws entered into force on 1 January 2020, affecting among others the Public Notary Act, the Company Registry Act and the Forensic Expert Act.