Asparuhovo Lake Investment Company OOD v Direktor na Direktsia „Obzhalvane i danachno-osiguritelna praktika“ Varna pri Tsentralno upravlenie na Natsionalnata agentsia za prihodite.
Date: 2015-09-03
29. In that regard, it should be recalled that, in the context of the cooperation between the Court and the national courts provided for in Article 267 TFEU, it is solely for the national court before which a dispute has been brought, and which must assume responsibility for the subsequent judicial decision, to determine in the light of the particular circumstances of the case both the need for a preliminary ruling in order to enable it to deliver judgment and the relevance of the questions which it submits to the Court. In addition, it is for the national courts to furnish the Court with the factual and legal information necessary to enable it to give useful answers to the questions referred (see, inter alia, judgment in Rosado Santana , C‑177/10, EU:C:2011:557, paragraphs 32 and 33).
33. As a preliminary point, it should be recalled that under the VAT Directive — as under Sixth Council Directive 77/388/EEC of 17 May 1977 on the harmonisation of the laws of the Member States relating to turnover taxes — Common system of value added tax (OJ 1977 L 145, p. 1) — the scope of VAT is very wide in that Article 2 of the VAT Directive, which concerns taxable transactions, refers not only to the importation of goods but also to the supply of goods or services for consideration within the territory of the country by a taxable person acting as such (judgment in Future Health Technologies , C‑86/09, EU:C:2010:334, paragraph 25).
35. In that regard, it must be recalled that, according to the Court’s case-law, the basis of assessment for a supply of services is everything which makes up the consideration for the service and that a supply of services is therefore taxable only if there is a direct link between the service supplied and the consideration received. Consequently, a service is taxable only if a legal relationship exists between the provider of the service and the recipient pursuant to which there is reciprocal performance, the remuneration received by the provider of the service constituting the value actually given in return for the service supplied to the recipient (see, to that effect, judgments in Tolsma , C‑16/93, EU:C:1994:80, paragraphs 13 and 14, and Kennemer Golf , C‑174/00, EU:C:2002:200, paragraph 39).
39. The fact that the services provided are neither defined in advance nor personalised and that the payment is made in the form of a lump sum is also not such as to affect the direct link between the supply of services made and the consideration received, the amount of which is determined in advance on the basis of well-established criteria (judgment in Le Rayon d’Or , C‑151/13, EU:C:2014:185, paragraph 37).
49. Thus, a service such as that at issue in the main proceedings, which in essence entails being permanently available to the customer in order to provide it with consulting services and which is remunerated by means of fixed sums paid periodically, must be regarded as being supplied in the period to which the payment relates, whether or not the service provider has actually provided advice to its customer during that period.
50. It is at the end of each period to which the payments relate that the supply must be regarded as having been completed for the purposes of Article 64(1) of the VAT Directive. Since the chargeable event and the chargeability of the tax depend on the moment when the service is supplied, in accordance with Article 63 of that directive, it follows that it is also at the end of each of those periods that that event and that chargeability occur.