Excise duties EU VAT case law

5 cases of the Court of Justice and the General Court of the European Union on this point of VAT law, from 2005 to 2024.

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Provisions these cases interpret most

Article 2 of Directive 2006/112/EC Subject matter and scope · 3 of these cases
Article 63 of Directive 2006/112/EC Supply of goods or services · 1 of these cases
Article 78 of Directive 2006/112/EC Supply of goods or services · 1 of these cases
Article 70 of Directive 2006/112/EC Importation of goods · 1 of these cases
Article 71 of Directive 2006/112/EC Importation of goods · 1 of these cases
Article 24 of Directive 2006/112/EC Supply of services · 1 of these cases
Article 6 of Sixth Directive 77/388/EEC Taxable transactions · 1 of these cases
Article 3 of Directive 2006/112/EC Subject matter and scope · 1 of these cases

The 5 cases, most recent first

Under each case, what the Court decided, from its summary. The summaries are AI-generated and are not official documents: open the case for the Court’s own text.

C-657/22 Bitulpetrolium Serv

Judgment · 25 April 2024 · Romania

VAT on penalty excise duty for energy products reintroduced into a tax warehouse

Directive 2003/96 and the principle of proportionality preclude both practices. Energy products must be taxed according to actual use. Imposing the motor fuel rate as a penalty for breach of formal conditions, without allowing the operator to prove actual use, exceeds what is necessary to counter evasion. Although Article 78(1)(a) prima facie brings excise duty into the taxable amount, VAT on the additional excise duty is not due unless a taxable supply of the product for use as a motor fuel actually takes place. Relevant to fuel distributors, tax warehousekeepers and their advisers in Member States that convert documentary or notification breaches into the higher motor fuel excise rate.

C-489/20 Kauno teritorinė muitinė

Judgment · 7 April 2022 · Lithuania

Extinguishment of the customs debt and survival of import VAT and excise duty

The customs debt is extinguished on seizure and subsequent confiscation even where the goods had already been unlawfully introduced. Unlike the 1992 Code, Article 124(1)(e) sets no timing condition. But neither Directive 2008/118 nor the VAT Directive contains any equivalent extinguishment provision. Once the goods have gone beyond the first customs office inside the territory, importation and release for consumption have occurred, the chargeable events have taken place, and excise duty and import VAT remain due regardless of the customs position. Confirms the customs and VAT/excise regimes have decoupled on extinguishment.

C-414/17 AREX CZ

Judgment · 19 December 2018 · Czechia

Ascribing the transport in chain supplies of excise goods

Article 2(1)(b)(iii) covers only taxable persons whose other intra-Community acquisitions fall outside VAT under Article 3(1). Other taxable persons are dealt with under Article 2(1)(b)(i). Liability for excise duty in the Member State of destination does not make that trader's acquisition the intra-Community one if the single transport cannot be ascribed to it. Movement under duty suspension is not decisive. The usual global assessment applies, turning on when the power to dispose as owner passed relative to the transport. Fuel, alcohol and tobacco chains are analysed for VAT on exactly the same basis as any other chain transaction. Relevant to energy traders, excise warehousekeepers and their advisers reviewing historic and current supply chain structures.

C-230/08 Dansk Transport og Logistik

Judgment · 29 April 2010

Smuggled goods seized and destroyed, and where the import VAT falls due

The Court held that for goods seized by the authorities after their irregular introduction, that is from the moment they left the area in which the first customs office inside the territory is situated, and simultaneously or subsequently destroyed by those authorities without ever ceasing to be in their possession, the chargeable event for VAT occurs and the tax becomes chargeable, even if the goods are subsequently placed under a customs procedure. It further held that Articles 202, 215(1) and (3) and 217 of the Customs Code and Articles 7(2) and 10(3) of the Sixth Directive mean that the authorities of the Member State situated at the external frontier through which the goods were irregularly introduced are competent to recover the customs debt and the VAT, even where the goods were afterwards carried to another Member State and there discovered and seized. Excise duty, by contrast, is recoverable by the authorities of that latter Member State provided the goods are held there for commercial purposes, which is for the referring court to determine. The judgment separates three charges that arise on the same physical movement and does not align them.

C-349/03 Commission v United Kingdom

Judgment · 21 July 2005 · United Kingdom

Mutual assistance obligations in a territory outside the harmonised VAT area

The Court held that provisions which merely require cooperation between Member States, each using its own methods of enquiry and of communicating information, are not harmonisation acts. Article 8(1) of the directive, preserving the limits imposed by national law and practice, shows that the directive goes no further. The mutual assistance obligation therefore applies to Gibraltar for both VAT and excise duties, irrespective of whether the substantive harmonising rules apply there. Derogations from Community law are construed strictly. Infringement declared. Confirms that exchange of information obligations bite in territories excluded from the harmonised VAT and excise regimes. Relevant to advisers dealing with structures using such territories, who cannot assume informational opacity follows from a tax exclusion.