- The EU court held that bringing a vessel irregularly into the EU for maintenance/repairs does not trigger import VAT if objective evidence shows it was never intended to be used in the EU and was re-exported without actual use there.
- Import VAT under Articles 30, 70 and 71 of the VAT Directive therefore depends on the goods entering the economic circuit of the EU; mere repair work is not enough.
- A good is not “used” for Article 124(1)(k) of the Union Customs Code where maintenance and repair were carried out before re-export, even if such work could have qualified under active inward processing.
- As a result, the customs debt is not necessarily extinguished merely because the vessel underwent repairs before leaving the EU; the key issue is whether it was “used” in the relevant legal sense.
Source: nlfiscaal.nl
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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