If a partnership does not generate any commercial income and the participation of at least one shareholder is in its business assets, the tax term refers to a so-called zebra company. The imaginary stripes do not stand for the variety of possibly applicable standards, but for the distinction between business assets on the one hand and private assets on the other. Contrary to what one might suspect at first glance, zebra societies have nothing to do with their eponymous relatives in the African desert.

1st Legal Basis of the Zebra Company

partnerships such as Offene Handelsgesellschaft (OHG) and limited partnership (KG) can also carry out asset management activities instead of an original commercial enterprise. This results from § 105 paragraph 2 HGB, which applies correspondingly to the KG via § 161 paragraph 2 HGB. § 1 paragraph 2 HGB must be demarcated, because a commercial trade is only present in commercial enterprises that require a commercially established business operation.

Is accordingly to be assumed to be an asset managing OHG or KG, which, however, is equivalent in commercial law to the commercially active company.

The zebra company is thus a purely tax “construct” resulting from § 15 EStG. For tax purposes, OHG and KG are so-called co-entrepreneurships, as far as the participants develop co-entrepreneur initiative and bear co-entrepreneur risk. The co-entrepreneurship becomes a zebra company only when the shareholders in it simultaneously generate commercial and private (surplus) income.

The white stripes of the zebra stand for private, the black ones for commercial income.

2nd Tax Treatment of the Zebra Company

The zebra company is a regular co-entrepreneurship in tax terms. The classification of their income is based on general principles, whereby taxation is carried out in accordance with the principle of transparency (§ 15 (1) sentence 1 no. 2 EStG). Relevant for the zebra company are therefore above all the following points: