Tax & Legal

The dispute before the Supreme Tax Court concerned the question of whether the tax office was correct to adjust an input VAT deduction of the plaintiff - following a successful appeal under insolvency law - where the plaintiff later received a refund of the import VAT paid. The court could not see any reasons why the plaintiff should receive a refund even though it no longer owed the tax.

In a Portuguese request for a preliminary ruling, the ECJ dealt with the question of the deadline when applying for a refund or carry over of a VAT surplus. In the case of dispute, the application for carry over was only made after the resumption of the previously discontinued economic activity.

In a recent decision, the Supreme Tax Court held that - in the case of bank transfers - the chargeable VAT for payments is incurred at the time the respective amount is credited to the payee's current account, even if the value date is at an earlier point in time.

The Supreme Tax Court dismissed the appellants' claim for input VAT for two luxury cars, on the basis that they were not allowable business expenditure for VAT purposes. An entrepreneur is only entitled to an input VAT deduction from an occasional purchase of a passenger car if there is an unambiguous connection with an intended business activity or if this contributes to expand his main line of business.

The Supreme Tax Court has doubts as to whether EU law precludes national case law which states that the decision to allocate an asset to private or business use must be submitted to the tax office by the end of the statutory period for submission of the annual VAT return. Accordingly, in a ruling of 18 September 2019 ( XI R 3/19 published on 30 January 2020) it has requested clarification from the European Union Court of Justice (ECJ).

Prior to the announcement on 21 March 2019 that Brexit may be postponed until either 12 April 2019, 22 May 2019 or possibly later, the British tax and customs authorities (HMRC) issued guidance on 18 March 2019 on the changes to VAT IT systems in the event of the United Kingdom leaving the EU on 29 March 2019 without a deal.

The Supreme Tax Court has held that the sale of an investment in a company is a non-business related activity and furthermore VAT-free as a sale of shares. The right to deduct the related input tax depends on the costs being not linked only to the sale.

The Supreme Tax Court has refused an input tax deduction on an invoice showing a tax office correspondence reference in place of the supplier's tax, or VAT ID, number.