E.ON, the energy utilities provider, has announced an improvement in its financial position as a result of a substantial refund of Germany’s nuclear power tax, which was recently overturned by a court.

The company announced in its first-half results on August 9 that its operating cash flow was EUR4.9bn (USD5.8bn), which was EUR3.2bn more than a year earlier, an improvement it attributed partly to “the roughly EUR2.85bn refund of nuclear fuel taxes E.ON received in June 2017.”

The company also said that the nuclear tax refund helped it reduce its debt “substantially” in the first half of 2017, writes tax-news.com.

RWE also reported recently that its financial position had improved as a result of “a significantly better financial result and the nuclear fuel tax refund.”

The nuclear tax law introduced, for the period from January 1, 2011, to December 31, 2016, was annulled retroactively by Germany’s Constitutional Court in a decision published in June 2017.