VAT briefing for November 2018

This month’s VAT briefing is split between a number of cases dealing with retail supplies and especially retail finance and VAT in a corporate group context. Undoubtedly the biggest decision was the CJEU’s rejection of the advocate general’s (AG’s) analysis of hire purchase (HP) contracts in Volkswagen Financial Services (Case C-153/17). There will be much relief that the CJEU has confirmed the status quo for treating HP as a multiple supply of exempt finance and standard-rated goods though determining the correct approach to the attribution of residual input VAT may still require work. This decision followed a day after a second decision in which the CJEU failed to follow the AG’s opinion – though in the first case Ryanair (Case C-249/17) the CJEU did not even mention the preferred approach...