The Court of Justice of the European Union dealt with the question of whether the value added tax, which is stated on the tax document, is also required to be paid by every person who calculates it in this way on the document.
The reason for this investigation was that the Austrian tax administration refused to grant a VAT refund claim to an Austrian company that calculated the wrong amount of VAT on the invoices it issued to final customers (non-VAT payers) throughout the year. This refund was supported by the submission of an additional tax return, where the amount of VAT was already reduced to the correct rate. The Austrian tax administration based its decision on the fact that in the event of a refund of incorrectly paid tax by the tax office, the company would be unjustly enriched, as its clients paid a higher rate.
The court then ruled in favor of the company. Because, according to Article 203 of the VAT Directive, it must be interpreted in the sense that the company is not obliged to remit the erroneously invoiced part of VAT due to the absence of a risk of loss of tax revenue. However, this fact only applies to those cases where the final customer is a consumer who cannot claim input VAT deduction.
