Since my earlier post on the CBR system further rulings have been issued and altogether 15 summaries have been published on the Commission’s public website on 20 March.
Joint opinion of tax authorities
The rulings published since last July concerned the following areas, industries and activities:
| Tax-related issue | Industry, activity |
| VAT treatment of transactions | Trading in precious metal spots and deliverable forwards, transformation of crude oil |
| Place of supply | Assigning pitch space to race tracks,transactions involving installation and assembly,complex services |
In addition to the above, one ruling commented on the applicability of the triangulation exemption in a specific case and another defined the conditions of exemption.
In one case (CBR 2015/12),one of the Member States issued an additional comment to the joint opinion: the ruling issued jointly by the Swedish, British and Portuguese tax authorities defined the place of supply of organising in-service teacher training courses as part of a service package (the place of supply was Sweden based on the circumstances presented in the ruling). To supplement the ruling, the Portuguese tax authority also presented their own interpretation of the transaction.
Lessons learnt, 2.0
The non-participation of Germany from CBR member states is still critical at system level. The participation of large member States is probably vital to the success of the CBR system. The summaries of the rulings indicate a scheme that is slowly but surely becoming increasingly popular: from only one ruling request in the first six months, the number of ruling requests reached eleven by the end of 2014. With the proposed process standardization (languages, deadlines, etc.) and with the launch of the public online CBR database, CBRs may become valuable for companies. Probably, it will worth looking at the number of CBR requests submitted in 2015.
For the pdf format summary on the 15 public CBRs, click here.
