- The plaintiff acted as an indirect customs representative for a Turkish entrepreneur and declared goods for release into free circulation.
- Import turnover tax (EUSt) was imposed accordingly.
- The goods did not arrive at the recipient in Germany, so the plaintiff waived the agreed fee for submitting the customs declaration.
- The plaintiff claimed the EUSt as input tax in their advance return, but the tax office disagreed.
- The Federal Fiscal Court (BFH) also denied the input tax deduction.
- According to a directive-compliant interpretation of § 15 para. 1 sentence 1 no. 2 UStG, the importation requires the company to use the imported item for the purposes of the taxable turnover of the entrepreneur.
- This requires that the entrepreneur himself uses the item for his own taxable transactions.
Source: datenbank.nwb.de
Note that this post was (partially) written with the help of AI. It is always useful to review the original source material, and where needed to obtain (local) advice from a specialist.
