According to the CJEU, Article 273 of the VAT Directive and the principle of proportionality preclude national legislation whereby a taxable person who has incorrectly classified a VAT-exempt transaction as a transaction subject to VAT is imposed a penalty of 20% of the amount with which the wrongly VAT refund requested is overstated, when this penalty equally applies to a situation where the irregularity results from the parties to the transaction incorrectly assessing its taxability and the transaction does not indicate that fraud or loss of income to the Treasury, as well as in a situation where such special circumstances do not exist.
Source BTW jurisprudentie
