Fiscale eenheid PPG Holdings BV cs te Hoogezand v Inspecteur van de Belastingdienst/Noord/kantoor Groningen.
Date: 2013-07-18
20. To answer that question, it should be recalled at the outset that the deduction system established by the Sixth Directive is meant to relieve the operator entirely of the burden of the VAT paid or payable in the course of all his economic activities. Thus the common system of VAT seeks to ensure complete neutrality of taxation of all economic activities, whatever their purpose or results, provided that they are themselves subject, in principle, to VAT (see Case C‑153/11 Klub [2012] ECR I‑0000, paragraph 35, and Case C‑550/11 PIGI  [2012] ECR I‑0000, paragraph 21).
21. For a taxable person to be accorded the right to deduct input VAT, and in order to determine the extent of that right, the existence of a direct and immediate link between a particular input transaction and an output transaction or transactions giving rise to the right to deduct is, in principle, necessary (see Case C‑98/98 Midland Bank  [2000] ECR I‑4177, paragraph 24, and Case C‑408/98 Abbey National  [2001] ECR I‑1361, paragraph 26).
22. However, a taxable person also has a right to deduct even where there is no direct and immediate link between a particular input transaction and an output transaction or transactions giving rise to the right to deduct, where the costs of the services in question are part of his general costs and are, as such, components of the price of the goods or services he supplies. Such costs have a direct and immediate link with the taxable person’s economic activity as a whole (see Case C‑104/12 Becker  [2013] ECR I‑0000, paragraph 20).
23. In either case, whether there is a direct and immediate link will depend on whether the cost of the input services is incorporated either in the cost of particular output transactions or in the cost of the goods or services supplied by the taxable person as part of his economic activities (see Case C‑29/08 SKF  [2009] ECR I‑10413, paragraph 60; Case C‑118/11 Eon Aset Menidjmunt [2012] ECR I‑0000, paragraph 48; and Case C‑651/11 X [2013] ECR I‑0000, paragraph 55).
25. It is common ground that in the case in the main proceedings PPG acquired the services in question for the purpose of the administration of its employees’ pensions and the management of the assets of the pension fund set up to safeguard those pensions. By setting up the fund, PPG complied with a legal obligation imposed on it as an employer, and, in so far as the costs of the services acquired by PPG in that connection form part of its general costs, which is for the referring court to verify, they are, as such, component parts of the price of PPG’s products (see, to that effect, Case C‑465/03 Kretztechnik  [2005] ECR I‑4357, paragraph 36).
28. That consideration is not called into question by the possibility, raised at the hearing, of complying with the legal obligation of providing a pension scheme for the taxable person’s employees by other means than setting up a fund in the form of a legally and fiscally separate entity. The contrary view would amount to restricting the freedom of taxable persons to choose the organisational structures and the form of transactions which they consider to be most appropriate for their economic activities and for the purposes of limiting their tax burdens (see, on this point, Case C‑277/09 RBS Deutschland Holdings  [2010] ECR I‑13805, paragraph 53).