Administrative operation (regional authority)

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The Regiebetrieb is a form of operation of the public companies and administrations of regional authorities (municipalities, states, federal government). It is the oldest organizational form of municipal corporate activities in Germany and Austria. Regions are a direct part of public administration.

Germany

Public companies are often municipal companies . You are a special public company form on the basis of municipal regulations or county ordinances of the federal states. They serve the economic fulfillment of public tasks.

There are also government operations in the German federal states themselves. They are also legally dependent parts of the respective state administrations.

Legal status

Municipal government operations are fully integrated into municipal or district administrations and are legally, organizationally, budgetarily and financially subordinate to municipal sovereignty. Unlike their own companies , they have no organs of their own and do not have an independent establishment plan . In the absence of legal personality, the legal representative of government operations is the (lord) mayor of the sponsoring body.

Regions are budgeted in an accounting expanded to include cost accounting according to the gross principle with all income and expenses in the budget of the local authority and embedded in the budget implementation. They do not have any separate business assets, but are classified in communal household practice. With this form of organization, the sovereign influence of the regional authority is comprehensively guaranteed at all times. Ongoing operations are "regularly managed by an office manager under the supervision of the responsible department head".

Like the municipality in charge of it, the government enterprise is incapable of bankruptcy . Regiebetriebs are legally dependent units of the sponsoring body, which financially do not represent a separate asset of the municipality, but are integrated into the budget management of the municipal budget of the sponsoring body. Accordingly, the income of the government companies - unlike in the case of own companies - flows directly into the municipal budget, and expenses are met directly from the budget of the sponsoring body. Under these circumstances, it is not possible to carry forward losses to the management company. Rather, the loss in the year in which the loss occurred is considered to be compensated for by contributions from the municipality; a loss carryforward is not possible due to the lack of financial independence of the government enterprise. The loss cannot be carried forward for public companies. Rather, there are deposits in the amount of the loss that are to be credited to the deposit account.

Tax treatment

Even if there is no organizational demarcation of the management company from the sponsoring or regional authority, from a tax point of view there is usually no lack of the criterion establishment within the meaning of § 4 KStG . The acceptance of a business of a commercial nature (BgA) cannot be ruled out. The profits of a business of a commercial nature without legal personality of its own (government operation) are, under certain conditions, income from capital assets of the sponsoring or regional body ( Section 20 (1) No. 10b EStG ) and are subject to withholding tax ( Section 43 (1) No. 7c EStG ). Losses made by a public company are deemed to have been compensated for in the year of loss by the sponsoring or regional authority. A loss carryforward is therefore basically not possible.

Another delimitation is the interpretation of the Electricity Tax Act. In a letter dated January 20, 2000, the German Federal Minister of Finance pointed out that due to the lack of "sufficient independence vis-à-vis the regional authority" there was no possibility of municipal government operations as companies within the meaning of § 2 no. 4 StromStG .

purpose

The directorate is mainly intended for smaller structural units. While almost half (45%) of the 155 theaters in Germany were run as directors, a form of organization in which the influence of politics and administration tends to be greatest, today it is only around 20%. Hospitals can also be organized as government operations, but the close interlinking with the public administration can result in a conflict of interest in their medical tasks. Hospitals are predominantly (44%) organized as GmbHs, only 7% are public companies. Museums, city libraries or kindergartens are also possible, as well as a cemetery , municipal building yard , swimming pool or vehicle fleet . Municipal photovoltaic systems can be run as a management company because of the VAT benefits. If a public company reaches a significant size, the sponsoring municipality can also outsource it to an institution under public law or into private legal forms (GmbH, AG) as part of its local self-administration .

Austria

A public company in Austria is a legally dependent institution under public law at the municipal and state level, which is part of the remaining assets of the municipality or the state that is dependent on budgetary, accounting, organizational and staffing matters. In Austria, too, the government is only a department of general administration. It does not require any form of foundation.

Switzerland

Regiebetriebs are public enterprises and institutions with tasks in the public interest. They are operated by the state under their own control and are part of the decentralized federal administration ; they are often linked to a state monopoly. They are involved in the administration to different degrees. Originally belonged to the Swiss Alcohol Board, the arms factories (Federal munitions factory Thun, Swiss munitions factory Altdorf (UR), Federal Konstruktionswerkstätte , Federal Aircraft Factory , Waffenfabrik Bern Bern, powder factory Wimmis, electrical utility Thun, the various military workshops), the PTT (postal services), the SBB , the Federal Mint as well as the powder administration etc. to the government operations.

With the ideas of public reform administration and deregulation, most of the state-owned companies were abolished in the mid-1990s or transformed into joint-stock companies (e.g. RUAG , Swisscom ) or public-law joint-stock companies ( SBB ).

In the cantons there are other, different regulations for the cantonal government operations.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Friedrich Ebert Foundation (ed.): The economic enterprises of the community. In: Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (ed.): Directions for municipal practice. Bonn 2004
  2. BFH, judgment of January 23, 2008, Federal Tax Gazette. 2008 II, p. 573
  3. ^ Schmidt, Thomas: Theater Management: An Introduction . VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2012, ISBN 978-3-531-18369-5 .
  4. Holger Mühlenkamp , The Influence of the Legal Form on the Costs and the Degree of Cost Coverage of Public Theaters in the Federal Republic of Germany , Work Report 192 at the Department of Economics and Social Sciences at the University of Lüneburg, 1998
  5. Barbara Schmitt-Rettig / Siegfried Eichhorn, Krankenhausmanagementlehre , 2007, p. 189
  6. Helmut Brede, Fundamentals of Public Business Administration , 2005, p. 79
  7. ^ Gisela Hürlimann: Regiebetriebe. In: Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz ., Accessed on November 23, 2013