CJEU – Recent Developments in Value Added Tax 2019

S. 681. Introduction

As an American commentator on Karina Elgaard’s excellent paper on the ne bis in idem principle and VAT, I thought it might be useful to provide a US perspective on the application of the principle in tax cases. Because this was not an issue with which I was familiar, I began, as US lawyers often begin their research into issues with which they are unfamiliar, by searching for the key terms on the Westlaw data base operated by Thomson Reuters. When I searched Westlaw for cases involving “ne bis in idem”, I received the following response: “Cases (0). No Documents Found.”

Although I was concerned that Westlaw’s response to my inquiry meant that I might be unable to provide a US perspective on the ne bis in idem principle, I recognized that my difficulty may simply have been a “lost in translation” problem, or, perhaps more precisely, a “found in translation” problem. As Elgaard observes, the Latin phrase ne bis in idem, which literally translates into “not twice about the same,” has been understood in legal parlance to reflect “the right not to be tried or punished twice for the same crime.” While no reported US case appears to have employed the term ne bis in idem to d...