According to a recent Federal Fiscal Court decision (XI R 16/16 of 25.04.2018), with regard to commissionaire structures personal VAT-exemptions also apply to the procurement of services by the undisclosed agent. Thus, the Federal Fiscal Court contradicts the fiscal authority’s current view. The decision results in changes, which will apply to all undisclosed agents procuring VAT-exempt supplies. They now need to check whether they are required to invoice without VAT in the future and whether VAT refunds can be applied for past transactions.

According to the Federal Fiscal Court, (decision of 16.05.2018 – XI R 28/16), any correction of VAT liability in accordance with sec 14c para 1 sentence 2 of the German VAT Act (= sec. 203 of the VAT Directive) requires, in addition to the correction of the invoice, that the supplier has paid back the wrongfully invoiced VAT amount to the customer. In the absence of such a repayment, the supplier would be unjustly enriched. For taxable persons this means that they often have to pre-finance the respective VAT amount. Further, they may declare the correction of their VAT liability to the tax office only during the reporting period of the repayment not earlier. However, there are still likely to be constellations where a repayment to the customer is irrelevant.

In its judgement of 25.07.2018 in the legal case C-140/17 the ECJ ruled that a municipality can become entitled to input VAT deduction by virtue of a subsequent allocation decision. According to the ECJ, an input VAT correction is not ruled out merely because the public body used an asset exclusively on behalf of the government at the time of its acquisition. The ruling gives hope to both public and private bodies that the previous static allocation of assets to the non-economic sector, at the time of their acquisition, will ultimately become a thing of the past.