Sale and lease of an enterprise including agricultural property. Civil law and tax problems

Abstract

The article concerns the issue of the sale of an enterprise which includes agricultural real estate. It was found that the provisions of the Act on shaping the agricultural system should be applied when transferring ownership of an enterprise, which includes agricultural real estate or shares of companies that own real estate with an area of more than 5 ha. This means, the sale of the enterprise must be divided into two binding contracts, and when the State Treasury does not exercise its pre-emption right – an ownership transfer contract must be made. Alternatively, the sale of an enterprise may be split into several contracts for agricultural property and other components, but this leads to difficulties in the tax classification of the entire transaction, i.e. whether it should be taxed with civil law transactions tax or each contract for the sale of a part of the enterprise with the tax on goods and services.