We thought it would fun to ease into the 2022-2023 academic year with a 2,5 hour online webinar covering 5 court cases. Although we may not agree with all decisions from the Courts, analysing them helps to understand the VAT treatment of transactions covered by the judgment. Given that such decisions are binding for the Tax Department, it is important to be aware of the facts, the court’s philosophy and the final conclusion.

We have chosen to present 5 court cases, a mixture from the Cyprus Appellate Court (Ολομέλεια) and the European Court of Justice (ECJ), covering a variety of VAT topics.

So….the Chelco VAT International Academy proudly sets off its 2022-2023 academic year with a 2,5-hour webinar examining and critically assessing three European Court of Justice and two Cyprus Courts VAT cases, as follows:

1. Cyprus: MTN Cyprus LTD v. Commissioner of Value Added Tax (Appellate Court), AE 73/15
   • case examined payments made to distributors and whether they related to the receipt of services (and therefore the VAT element was deductible by MTN) or whether they were subsidies for the mobile telephones sold by the distributors (and thus there was no VAT and no deduction);
     
     
2. ECJ: Staatssecretaris van Financiën v L.W. Geelen, C-568/17
   • case examined the place of supply of live erotic webcam sessions, and whether such place of supply resulted in the imposition of European VAT or not as the entertainers were physically located outside of the EU;
     
     
3. ECJ: Skatteverket v Srf konsulterna AB, C-647/17
   • case examined the place of supply of B2B services in respect of the admission to educational events, and whether VAT was chargeable in the place where the event actually took place or whether it was where the customer was established. This looked into whether there was a distinction between ‘admission’ to an event and ‘participation’ to an event. This in turn rests on the difference between passive attendance and active participation as well as the possibility to register and pay for the event ‘at the door’;
     
     
4. Cyprus: Republic of Cyprus through 1. Minister of Finance 2. Commissioner of Value Added Tax v. Lachi Beach Development Co Ltd (Appellate Court), AE 151/2012
   • case examined the right to deduct and whether expenses have a direct and immediate link with a taxable activity that never took place or an exempt activity that did;
     
     
5. ECJ: C&D Foods Acquisition ApS v Skatteministeriet, C-502/17
   • case examined whether the input VAT on expenses incurred for the sale of the shares in a sub- subsidiary can be deducted, even though the sale was never carried out.

The webinar is targeted towards VAT professionals, VAT advisors, tax lawyers, accountants of all levels, CFOs, Chief Accountants, auditors, VAT Department officers, et al.

The webinar carries 2,5 CPDs and will be conducted in English.