Blackrock Investment Management (UK) Limited v Commissioners for Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs.
Date: 2020-07-02
21


It should be recalled that, in accordance with the Court’s settled case-law, the exemptions laid down in Article 135(1) of the VAT Directive constitute independent concepts of EU law whose purpose is to avoid divergences in the application of the VAT system as between one Member State and another (judgment of 25 July 2018, DPAS, C‑5/17, EU:C:2018:592, paragraph 28 and the case-law cited).
22


Furthermore, the terms used to designate the exemptions covered by Article 135(1) of the VAT Directive are to be interpreted strictly since these exemptions constitute exceptions to the general principle that VAT is to be levied on all services supplied for consideration by a taxable person (see, to that effect, the judgment of 19 December 2018, Mailat, C‑17/18, EU:C:2018:1038, paragraph 37). It follows that, where a supply of services does not fall within the exemptions provided for by the VAT Directive, the supply is subject to VAT by virtue of Article 2(1)(c) of that directive (judgment of 10 April 2019, PSM K, C‑214/18, EU:C:2019:301, paragraph 43).
23


As a preliminary matter, as regards whether the supply of services provided by BFMI to BlackRock by means of the Aladdin platform must be regarded as being a single supply, it should be recalled, as is clear from the settled case-law, that while each transaction must normally be regarded as being distinct and independent, as is clear from the second subparagraph of Article 1(2) of the VAT Directive, a transaction which comprises a single supply from an economic point of view should not be artificially split, so as not to distort the functioning of the VAT system. That is why there is a single supply where two or more elements or acts supplied by the taxable person to the customer are so closely linked that they form, objectively, a single, indivisible economic supply, which it would be artificial to split (judgment of 18 January 2018, Stadion Amsterdam, C‑463/16, EU:C:2018:22, paragraph 22 and the case-law cited).
29


On the one hand, there is a single supply where one or more elements are to be regarded as constituting the principal supply, while other elements are to be regarded, by contrast, as one or more ancillary supplies which share the tax treatment of the principal supply. In particular, a service must be regarded as ancillary to a principal service if it does not constitute for customers an aim in itself, but a means of better enjoying the principal service supplied (judgments of 25 February 1999, CPP, C‑349/96, EU:C:1999:93, paragraph 30, and of 18 January 2018, Stadion Amsterdam, C‑463/16, EU:C:2018:22, paragraph 23 and the case-law cited).
34


The Court has also already held that the management of an investment portfolio is a single supply, composed of the service of analysis and of monitoring the assets of the client investor and the service of purchasing and selling securities, and that both the first and the second are equally indispensable in carrying out the service as a whole (see, to that effect, the judgment of 19 July 2012, Deutsche Bank, C‑44/11, EU:C:2012:484, paragraph 26 and 27).