CJEU – Recent Developments in Value Added Tax 2018

S. 191Taxable Amount & VAT Rates

Frank Nellen/Ad van Doesum

1. S. 192Introduction

In this chapter, recent CJEU rulings on the determination of the taxable amount and on the VAT rate(s) are discussed. The discussion is restricted to judgments which were published in the period between 1 January 2018 and 13 December 2018.

With respect to the taxable amount in EU VAT, the primary CJEU case law of last year concerned the following cases:

As regards the VAT rates, only one mentionable judgment has been published:

Section 2 will look at the cases on the taxable amount. In section 3, we address the case on the VAT rates.

2. Taxable amount

2.1. Case C-305/16, Avon Cosmetics

The United Kingdom appears to have quite a tradition in the application of so-called “direct sales schemes”. The essence of such schemes is that a company sells its products to “representatives” who in turn make retail sales to customers at a markup. In the United Kingdom, these schemes seem to continuously spark debate on the determination of the taxable amount for VAT. Cases such as Direct Cosmetics I, Direct Cosmetics II, Naturally Yours Cosmetics and Freemans all origin...