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VAT treatment of financial leases in EU law

Kochkodan, Igor LU (2015) HARN60 20151
Department of Business Law
Abstract
Treatment of financial leases has always been a major problem of European VAT. Lack of clear rules in the VAT Directive combined with different approaches employed by the national laws of Member States resulted in a high degree of legal uncertainty and provided remarkable opportunities for abusive arrangements. Although significant part of this work is focused on current VAT treatment of financial leases in the case law of the CJEU, its purpose is a little bit broader. The main goal of the thesis is to reflect on the line of reasoning followed by the Court, to assess its advantages and shortcomings and to make some assumptions regarding its further development. In order to achieve this objective, the author addresses key underlying... (More)
Treatment of financial leases has always been a major problem of European VAT. Lack of clear rules in the VAT Directive combined with different approaches employed by the national laws of Member States resulted in a high degree of legal uncertainty and provided remarkable opportunities for abusive arrangements. Although significant part of this work is focused on current VAT treatment of financial leases in the case law of the CJEU, its purpose is a little bit broader. The main goal of the thesis is to reflect on the line of reasoning followed by the Court, to assess its advantages and shortcomings and to make some assumptions regarding its further development. In order to achieve this objective, the author addresses key underlying concepts, such as “supply of goods”, distinction between financial and operational leases; pays some attention to the VAT treatment of transactions similar to financial leases and notion of “similarity” in case law of the CJEU; demonstrates the evolution of approach currently used by the Court in respect of financial leases. Possible impact of anticipated adoption of new IFRS for leases on the case law of the CJEU is also considered briefly in the paper. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
author
Kochkodan, Igor LU
supervisor
organization
course
HARN60 20151
year
type
H1 - Master's Degree (One Year)
subject
keywords
supply of goods, transactions similar to leases, financial lease, fiscal neutrality, European VAT
language
English
id
5435653
date added to LUP
2015-06-12 15:56:35
date last changed
2015-06-12 15:56:35
@misc{5435653,
  abstract     = {{Treatment of financial leases has always been a major problem of European VAT. Lack of clear rules in the VAT Directive combined with different approaches employed by the national laws of Member States resulted in a high degree of legal uncertainty and provided remarkable opportunities for abusive arrangements. Although significant part of this work is focused on current VAT treatment of financial leases in the case law of the CJEU, its purpose is a little bit broader. The main goal of the thesis is to reflect on the line of reasoning followed by the Court, to assess its advantages and shortcomings and to make some assumptions regarding its further development. In order to achieve this objective, the author addresses key underlying concepts, such as “supply of goods”, distinction between financial and operational leases; pays some attention to the VAT treatment of transactions similar to financial leases and notion of “similarity” in case law of the CJEU; demonstrates the evolution of approach currently used by the Court in respect of financial leases. Possible impact of anticipated adoption of new IFRS for leases on the case law of the CJEU is also considered briefly in the paper.}},
  author       = {{Kochkodan, Igor}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  note         = {{Student Paper}},
  title        = {{VAT treatment of financial leases in EU law}},
  year         = {{2015}},
}