Judgment C-662/13 12.02.2015 |
Parties |
Jurisdiction |
Formation |
Judge Rapporteur |
Advocate General |
Subject-matter |
Reference for a preliminary ruling |
Surgicare — Unidades de Saúde SA v. Fazenda Pública
|
CJEU |
9th Ch. |
K. Jürimäe |
P. Mengozzi |
VAT |
Key-words |
VAT — Directive 2006/112/EC — Deduction of input tax — Transactions constituting an abusive practice — National tax law — Special national procedure where the existence of abusive practices is suspected in the field of taxation — Principles of effectiveness and equivalence. |
|||||
Significant points |
In the absence of any EU rules in the area, the means of preventing VAT fraud falls within the internal legal order of the Member States under the principle of procedural autonomy of the latter. In that regard, it is apparent from the Court’s settled case-law that it is for the domestic legal system of each Member State, in particular, to designate the authorities responsible for combatting VAT fraud and to lay down detailed procedural rules for safeguarding rights which individuals derive from EU law, provided that such rules are not less favourable than those governing similar domestic actions (principle of equivalence) and that they do not render impossible in practice or excessively difficult the exercise of rights conferred by the EU legal order (principle of effectiveness).
Consequently, Council Directive 2006/112/EC of 28 November 2006 on the common system of value added tax must be interpreted as meaning that it does not preclude the mandatory preliminary application of a national administrative procedure, such as that laid down by Article 63 of the Code of Taxation Procedure and Proceedings (Código de Procedimento e de Processo Tributário), in the event that the revenue authorities suspect the existence of an abusive practice. |
|||||
Noteworthy |