Vereniging Noordelijke Land- en Tuinbouw Organisatie v Staatssecretaris van Financiën.
Date: 2009-02-12
27. It is necessary to recall, at the outset, that the deduction system established by the directive is meant to relieve the trader entirely of the burden of the VAT payable or paid 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‑408/98 Abbey National  [2001] ECR I‑1361, paragraph 24 and the case‑law cited).
28. Consequently, where goods or services acquired by a taxable person are used for purposes of transactions that are exempt or do not fall within the scope of VAT, no output tax can be collected or input tax deducted (see Case C‑184/04 Uudenkaupungin kaupunki  [2006] ECR I‑3039, paragraph 24, and Case C‑72/05 Wollny  [2006] ECR I‑8297, paragraph 20).
32. In its observations, the national court referred to, inter alia, Case C‑434/03 Charles and Charles‑Tijmens  [2005] ECR I‑7037, particularly paragraphs 23 to 25 of that judgment, in which the Court referred to the case‑law on the system of VAT applicable to capital goods in mixed use, that is to say, in use for both business and private purposes. It follows that the taxable person has the choice, for VAT purposes, of (i) allocating goods wholly to the assets of his business, (ii) retaining them wholly within his private assets, thereby excluding them entirely from the system of VAT, or (iii) integrating them into his business only to the extent to which they are actually used for business purposes. Should the taxable person choose to treat capital goods used for both business and private purposes as business goods, the input VAT due on the acquisition of those goods is, in principle, immediately deductible in full. In those circumstances, when the input VAT paid on goods forming part of the assets of a business is wholly or partly deductible, their use for the private purposes of the taxable person or of his staff or for purposes other than those of his business is treated as a supply of services for consideration pursuant to Article 6(2)(a) of the directive.
34. It is common ground that activities such as those by which an association promotes the general interests of its members are not activities ‘subject to [VAT]’ under the terms of Article 2(1) of the directive, since they do not consist of the supply of goods or services effected for consideration (see, to that effect, Joined Cases C‑354/03, C‑355/03 and C‑484/03 Optigen and Others  [2006] ECR I‑483, paragraph 42 and the case‑law cited).
36. In that regard, the Court stated, at paragraph 26 of that judgment, that non‑economic activities do not fall within the scope of the directive, specifying, at paragraph 28 thereof, that the deductions scheme laid down by the directive relates to all economic activities of a taxable person, whatever their purpose or results, provided that they are, in principle, themselves subject to VAT.
37. The Court accordingly held, at paragraphs 30 and 31 of the judgment in Securenta , that the input VAT relating to expenditure incurred by a taxable person cannot give rise to a right to deduct in so far as it relates to activities which, in view of their non‑economic nature, do not come within the scope of the directive and that, where a taxable person simultaneously carries out economic activities, whether taxed or exempt, and non‑economic activities outside the scope of the directive, deduction of the input VAT relating to expenditure is allowed only to the extent to which that expenditure may be attributed as an output to the economic activity of the taxable person.
38. It follows from these considerations that, as the Advocate General has noted in point 38 of his Opinion, Article 6(2)(a) of the directive is not intended to establish a rule that transactions outside the scope of the system of VAT may be considered to be carried out for ‘purposes other than’ those of the business within the meaning of that provision. Such an interpretation would have the effect of rendering Article 2(1) of the directive meaningless.