European Union: ECJ Judgement In Case C-696/22, C SPRL 

On June 13, 2024, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled that:

The continuous supply of services over a certain period, such as those carried out under Romanian law by court-appointed administrators and liquidators for the benefit of undertakings which are the subject of insolvency proceedings, falls within the scope of Article 64(1) of that directive, in so far as, subject to investigations to be carried out by the referring court, those services give rise to successive statements of account or successive payments.

In a situation where payment of remuneration for services falling within the scope of that provision cannot take place because there are insufficient funds in the debtor’s accounts, that provision does not permit the inference that value-added tax becomes chargeable only at the time when the remuneration is actually received.

In order to establish that there is a direct and immediate link between a particular input transaction, on the one hand, and the output transactions giving rise to the right of deduction, on the other, it is necessary to determine the objective content of those transactions, which entails considering all the circumstances surrounding those transactions, that is to say, in particular, the actual use of the goods and services purchased by the taxable person as inputs and the exclusive reason for that purchase, the increase in turnover or the increase in the volume of taxable transactions not being relevant in that regard.

The general EU-law principle of respect for the rights of the defence must be interpreted as meaning that in the context of an administrative complaint procedure against a value-added tax assessment notice, where the competent authority adopts a decision based on new elements of fact and of law in respect of which the person concerned has been unable to state its position, the decision adopted at the end of that procedure must be annulled if, had it not been for that irregularity, the outcome of that procedure might have been different, even though, at the request of the person concerned, enforcement of that tax assessment notice has been suspended in parallel with the legal proceedings brought against that decision.

Sources/ recommended read:

• CURIA - Documents (europa.eu)