Zagreb - The Croatian Parliament on Friday passed a set of amendments to tax laws introducing additional tax relief for business sponsorships of nonprofit and socially beneficial projects, as well as administrative relief for businesses, with an estimated total value of €72.6 million.
The changes were adopted under fast-track procedure and will take effect on 1 January 2026, at the same times as the Fiscalisation Act regarding the issuance and fiscalisation of e-invoices.
Under the amendments to the Corporate Income Tax Act, companies can now deduct sponsorship costs contracted domestically for cultural, scientific, educational, health, humanitarian, sports, religious, environmental, and other socially beneficial purposes. For the first time, sponsorship costs can be recognised twice: once as a business expense and a second time as a reduction of the tax base.
The Value Added Tax Act and the General Tax Act were also amended to align with the Fiscalisation Act and ease administrative burdens by removing certain reporting obligations. These include reporting on food donations, maintaining a register of issued invoices, submitting special records of goods sold to passengers, filing declarations on domestic supplies with reverse charge, and keeping special records of received invoices. The removal of these requirements is estimated to save businesses €72.64 million.
Amendments to the General Tax Act also provide exemptions from the obligation to maintain tax confidentiality when exchanging analytical data on local taxes and personal income tax between the Tax Administration and local or regional government units.
The Minimum Global Corporate Tax Act was amended to clarify the calculation of the qualified domestic top-up tax paid by subsidiaries of multinational companies.
Two proposals from the Bridge party and independent MP Josip Jurčević did not pass -- one aimed to prevent personal data (emails, photos, documents, health data) from being subject to tax audits or access/copying measures, and the other requested that Parliament receive a report on the powers of tax authorities in other EU member states regarding access to and copying of personal electronic devices of citizens and businesses.
The Parliament also amended four financial laws -- on covered bonds and their public oversight, the acquisition of joint-stock companies, insurance, and financial conglomerates.
These changes further align Croatia's regulatory framework with EU law, particularly with the introduction of the European Single Access Point (ESAP), which will centralise all information needed for informed investment decisions.
ESAP aims to make the EU capital market more attractive and provide companies and financial products in the EU with greater visibility in the global investment community, thereby opening more and better financing opportunities.
All four laws also determine HANFA's (Financial Services Supervisory Agency) role in collecting information and require recipients to submit publicly available information to HANFA in a machine-readable format with mandatory metadata, so that it can be forwarded to ESAP.