Raise your hand if you have any certainty of when recharges of costs between a branch and its head office fall outside the scope of VAT. Some time ago, we would have been pretty confident to regard such intra-entity ‘services’[1] – i.e., transactions between a branch and its head office – as falling outside the scope…

In the first part of this article, the authors provided an overview of the Blackrock case. In the second part of this article, the authors consider the DBKAG case and reflect on the impact that these decisions have on businesses in the short and mid-term. 2.2 Is the supply of a specific software capable of…

In this article, which is divided in two parts, the authors consider two judgments from the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in respect of the VAT exemption for the management of funds. In particular, the authors examine how these judgments deal with the issue of digitalisation and outsourcing. Part 1 of this…

State of affairs Over the last two decades, eminent scholars and commentators have been highlighting the numerous issues arising from the current regime governing insurance and financial services as laid down in Article 135, 1, (a)-(g) of the Directive 2006/112/EC (“VAT directive“). From the lack of competitiveness of EU financial services businesses versus US counterparts…