Diritto ed Economia dell'ImpresaISSN 2499-3158
G. Giappichelli Editore

08/08/2019 - Subsequent sales transactions: they do not necessarily configure the existence of an abusive practice

argomento: News del mese - Diritto Internazionale e Comunitario

Articoli Correlati: VAT - subsequent sales transactions - abusive practice

In the dispute C-273/18, the E.U. Court of Justice provided clarifications in the context regarding the refusal, by the tax administration of Latvia, to recognize the right to deduct the tax on the value added (VAT) concerning the purchases of goods made by a Latvian company “A” at another company “B” which was also Latvian, as such purchases would not actually have taken place. In particular, company A, from February to December 2012, had declared operations to purchase goods from another company B established in Latvia, and had deducted the VAT paid upstream. It emerged that these purchases had occurred at the end of a chain of successive transactions between various companies. It had been considered, on the one hand, that the intermediary companies had not actually exercised any activity in the realization of the purchase of the assets in question and, on the other, that the company A could not ignore the artificial nature of this chain. The fact that a purchase of goods took place at the end of a chain of subsequent sales transactions between various persons and that the taxable person came into possession of the assets in question in the deposit of a person belonging to that chain, different from the person who appears as a supplier on the invoice, is not in itself sufficient to configure the existence of an abusive practice by the taxable person or other persons involved in the aforementioned chain and, therefore, to deny the right to deduct value added tax (VAT) paid upstream. The competent tax authority is required to prove the existence of an undue tax advantage enjoyed by that taxable person or such other persons.