The starting point is that every entrepreneur is independently involved in the VAT levy, even if there is a concern or collaborating group. There is an exception to that rule: the fiscal unity. Under the fiscal unity scheme for VAT, entrepreneurs who are intertwined from a financial, organizational and economic point of view are regarded together as one VAT entrepreneur. In 2015, the Court of Justice ruled that the concretion of these interdependencies had to take place at national level. The Court therefore did not regard the interconnectedness requirements for the fiscal unity as union concepts, the interpretation of which is reserved to the Court itself.
The recent Norddeutsche Gesellschaft für Diakonie judgment of the Court of Justice (C-141/20) raises the question of whether the interpretation of the term ‘financial interdependence’ by the Supreme Court is not too strict.
Source: btwinstituut.nl
