Information from the General Financial Directorate

At the beginning of October, two pieces of information summarizing the basic rules of the VAT Act were published. The first concerns the creation of a VAT group and announces the possibility of creating VAT groups also in the case of organizational units of the state and territorial self-governing units, including their contributory organizations. Taxpayers will learn from it that when creating a group, it is not necessary to return the tax deduction rights originally claimed by the respective members. The second information contains a warning about the basic obligations of taxi drivers providing passenger transport services thanks to the use of mobile applications of other companies (e.g. UBER, BOLT and similar).

The General Financial Directorate is currently preparing a very extensive information regarding the supply of real estate. The draft that we had available for inspection contains a description of the application of the VAT rules in force from 1 July 2025 and brings a corrective interpretation in many areas that would hardly be possible to infer from the text of the law alone. These include, for example, the issue of land in a functional unit with a building, the clarification of the interpretation of the term “substantial change”, the assessment of the role of buildings intended for demolition or the determination of building land from the perspective of VAT.

Judgements of the CJEU

• In case C-535/24 Svilosa AD, the Court of Justice dealt with the assessment of whether it is necessary to pay output VAT on the value of the service supplied by the creditor to its customer. That service consisted in the creditor using its own resources to reach out to the customer’s business partners and to recover the sums owed by those partners to the customer. According to the Court, from the point of view of VAT, there was no taxable transaction because the customer himself had a debt with the creditor and the creditor thus acted in his own interest (in an effort to obtain funds for his customer in order to be able to repay the debt he had provided to him).
• In his opinion in case C-472/24 Žaidim valiuta, the Advocate General of the Court of Justice of the EU assessed the VAT regime for virtual currency, which can be used to purchase various benefits in computer games. This currency can be obtained by playing games, bought from the provider of the games, or bought and sold on the secondary market (electronic exchange). The Advocate General does not consider the means of payment in question to be a cryptocurrency or vouchers for VAT purposes and considers that they should be taxable supplies if they take place on the secondary market. It admits that a special second-hand goods regime could be applied to their sale (even though it is a matter of supplying services). The Advocate General’s opinion contains a number of interesting and innovative ideas, and it is questionable whether the CJEU will hold the same opinions.
• In his opinion in case C-409/24 J-GmbH, the Advocate General of the Court of Justice of the EU stated that a Member State may apply two different rates to a single complex service if it consists of a principal and ancillary service (for example, accommodation including breakfast). According to the Advocate General, the condition is that the ancillary supply in question is separable, hypothetically available separately and that it is in principle dispensable for the customer. This is a rather controversial opinion, to which the Court of Justice of the EU is likely to express reservations.