Judgment in Case C-39/17 (Lubrizol) of 14 June 2018
Facts:
Lubrizol, a French company in the chemicals sector, manufactures and sells additives for lubricants. As a simplified joint stock company established in France, it is subject to paying specific legal contributions. these contributions are calculated and levied on the annual turnover of companies
Lubrizol did not include the value of its intra-Community transfers in its annual turnover, and (thus) did not pay contributions on these transfers. It argued that this value of the goods that it had transferred to other EU Member States did not come within the basis of assessment for the contributions, as, at the date of those transfers, it was still the owner of those goods and had not yet transferred them to its customers, with the result that those transfers did not constitute a sale and thus part of its turnover.
The question the European Court of Justice had to answer was if the basis of assessment for contributions levied on the annual turnover of companies, is calculated by taking into account the value of the goods transferred by or on behalf of a taxable person, for the purposes of his business, from that Member State to another EU Member State, that value being taken into account from the time of that transfer, whereas, in the case where the same goods are transferred by or on behalf of the taxable person, for the purposes of his business, within the territory of the Member State concerned, their value is not taken into account in the basis of assessment until their subsequent sale.
Judgment:
Member State are allowed to levy contributions on the annual turnover of companies, whereby this annual turnover includes the value of the transfer of own goods to another EU Member State, on condition that:
– first, the value of those goods is not taken into account in that basis of assessment for a second time at the time of their subsequent sale in that Member State;
– secondly, their value is deducted from that basis of assessment when those goods are not intended to be sold in the other Member State or have been transferred back to the Member State of origin without having been sold, and
– thirdly, the advantages stemming from the use of those contributions do not offset in full the burden borne by the national product marketed on the national market when it is placed on the market, this being a matter for the referring court to ascertain.
Source: Curia
