Emergency medical services are also exempt from Value Added Tax if provided and charged by a physician on duty for another medical doctor (e.g., on weekends and outside the consultation hours of panel doctors). This was decided by the Supreme Tax Court in a recently published judgment.
The Supreme Tax Court decided that the waiver of a head physician of the right to private liquidation in return for monthly compensation payments made by the clinic owner to be able to bill privately insured persons himself is a taxable service and subject to VAT. Moreover, relinquishing the future right for private medical treatment does not fall under the medical services exemption as provided by national law.
Telephone advisory services provided by a company on behalf of state health insurance funds through so-called “health coaches” may be exempt from VAT under Article 132 (1) of the VAT Directive as "medical treatment in the field of human medicine", if the consultations have a therapeutic purpose. This was the conclusion of the ECJ following on a request for a preliminary ruling brought by the Supreme Tax Court. The latter has now issued its subsequent (follow-up) decision and referred the case back to the Lower Tax Court for further fact finding.
