Fazenda Pública v Solisnor-Estaleiros Navais SA, also represented: Ministério Pùblico.
Date: 1997-09-17
13 The Court has consistently held (see, in particular, Case 295/84 Rousseau Wilmot v Organic [1985] ECR 3759, paragraph 16; Case C-347/90 Bozzi v Cassa Nazionale di Previdenza ed Assistenza a favore degli Avvocati e dei Procuratori Legali [1992] ECR I-2947, paragraph 9; and Case C-208/91 Beaulande v Directeur des Services Fiscaux, Nantes [1992] ECR I-6709, paragraph 12) that, in leaving the Member States free to maintain or introduce certain indirect taxes such as excise duties on condition that they are not taxes which can be `characterized as turnover taxes', Article 33 of the Sixth Directive seeks to prevent the functioning of the common system of VAT from being jeopardized by fiscal measures of a Member State levied on the movement of goods and services and charged on commercial transactions in a way comparable to VAT.
14 Taxes, duties and charges which have the essential characteristics of VAT must in any event be treated as such measures, even thought they are not identical to VAT in all respects.  As the Court has pointed out many times, those characteristics are as follows: VAT applies generally to transactions relating to goods or services; it is proportional to the price of those goods or services, irrespective of the number of transactions which take place; it is charged at each stage of the production and distribution process; and, finally, it is imposed on the added value of goods and services, the tax payable on a transaction being calculated after deduction of the tax paid on the previous transaction (see, in particular, Case 252/86 Bergandi v Directeur Général des Impôts [1988] ECR 1343, paragraph 15; Joined Cases 93/88 and 94/88 Wisselink and Others v Staatssecretaris van Financiën [1989] ECR 2671, paragraph 18; Case C-109/90 Giant v Gemeente Overijse [1991] ECR I-1385, paragraphs 11 and 12; Case C-200/90 Dansk Denkavit and Poulsen v Skatteministeriet [1992] ECR I-2217, paragraph 11; Bozzi, cited above, paragraph 12; and Beaulande, cited above, paragraphs 12 and 14).
17 Suffice it to note in this regard that stamp duty of the kind described by the national court is not a general tax since it is not intended to apply to all economic transactions in the Member State concerned (see, to this effect, Beaulande, paragraph 16).  According to Article 1 of the stamp duty regulation, the duty is levied solely on `the documents, books, papers, acts and products specified in the TGIS', and, more specifically, according to Article 91 of the TGIS, on `works contracts and contracts for the supply of materials or any kind of consumer article', to the exclusion of a large portion of economic transactions in the Member State concerned, such as contracts for the supply of services or contracts for the sale of movable property, referred to respectively in the former Articles 141 and 50(1)(a) of the TGIS, which have now been repealed.
19 In those circumstances, and without its being necessary to examine its other specific features, it must be held that a tax of the type referred to by the national court does not have one of the essential characteristics of VAT.
20 The answer to the question submitted must therefore be that Article 33 of the Sixth Directive must be construed as not precluding the maintenance of a national charge having the characteristics of a stamp duty levied on works contracts and contracts for the supply of materials or any kind of consumer article, to the exclusion of a large portion of economic transactions in the Member State concerned.