CJEU – Recent Developments in Value Added Tax 2015

I. S. 23Introduction

For decades, soft law has played a role in the largely non-harmonized area of EU direct taxation. It more recently appeared in the harmonized area of EU VAT with the emergence of the VAT Committee guidelines (published since 2012), the adoption of ‘explanatory notes’ by the Commission (for the first time in 2014), and the opinions of the VAT Expert Group (since 2014). Beyond the EU borders, International VAT/GST guidelines are now also being developed under the auspices of the OECD of which substantial sections were endorsed by more than 100 states in 2014 and 2015. The objective of this chapter is to analyze and assess these four instruments including the influence that they have in the CJEU case law and to incite a discussion on the possible negative and positive uses of soft law in an EU harmonized area. The first primary conclusion that we can derive from this assessment is that the VAT Committee guidelines and the Commission explanatory notes do open the way to ‘informal governance’ in the area of VAT, which seems hardly reconcilable with the objective of harmonization. Our second main conclusion is that the VAT Expert Group opinions are the most desirable form ...