Direct Claim for Refund of Incorrectly Paid VAT: Legal Implications and Practical Considerations

• If a recipient of services has paid too much value-added tax to the service provider due to an invoice according to § 14c UStG, the recipient must generally seek reimbursement of this amount from the service provider through civil law.
• If the recipient is unable to enforce this civil law claim or if it is excessively difficult, they have a claim against their tax authority for payment of the VAT amount
• the so-called direct claim.
• A recipient of an invoice with wrongly stated VAT can demand repayment from the tax authority through a direct claim if reclaiming from the issuer is excessively difficult.
• The tax authority’s practice of waiting for the conclusion of insolvency proceedings does not ensure the neutrality of VAT and the effectiveness of European law.

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.

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