In this article, we will explore how the courts ruled on a tax audit where the State Revenue Service (SRS) claimed the company under audit had wrongly deducted input VAT and misapplied a ratio. Although the SRS did not approve the company’s adjustments to its VAT returns and did not refund the VAT it had overpaid, the courts found the penalty and interest charged by the SRS to be justified. This case highlights important lessons for companies to avoid similar problems in the future.

In its ruling C26128713, SKC-201/2019 of 28 June 2019, the Supreme Court took a different view on the VAT Act’s condition that the taxable amount should include only taxes payable in relation to a supply of services. The dispute involved a forced lease of land that stipulated a rent plus a compensation of real estate tax (RET). The Supreme Court was assessing whether VAT should be charged on the compensation. First of all, the assessment focused on what items attract RET and who is liable to pay it.

In this article we explore Ruling C-606/22 from the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) on the entitlement to a refund of value added tax (VAT) where the taxable person has applied a higher rate of VAT than what the law prescribes. This ruling is important because it explains how the VAT directive’s principles should be applied in practice where a cash-register receipt has been issued to the customer, which is practically impossible to amend in order to show the correct rate of VAT and to refund the overpaid tax to the customer.