Economic-Administrative Court’s Resolution. Consideration of single supply of service or not for VAT purposes

The Resolution of the Court comes from a request for correction of the VAT returns corresponding to years 2007 to 2009, filed by the taxpayer, in order to recover the sums overpaid since the services rendered were charged at the VAT general rate while some of them would be subject to the VAT reduced rate of 7%.

The company is a concessionaire for the project of execution, construction and further exploitation and maintenance of a hospital. In compliance with the contract concluded with the Administration, the company provides many different services (from the construction of the hospital until the exploitation thereof, and related services as cleaning, catering, security, etc) so it understand that services should be treated individually and charged according to the relevant VAT rate.

However, the Court rejected his request because he understood that for this case, there is a unique supply of service that should not be artificially split in economic terms, since the elements of the context are sufficient to consider that there is a single complex provision.

This is based on the single recipient (the government) that could have hired independently each of the services of the main contract, but has not done so this meaning that is looking for a unique service and, therefore, its purpose is to consider the services as inseparable. Moreover, it is based on the only object of the contract: the full readiness, maintenance and exploitation of the hospital, and they pay a single price, to determine that it is not possible to separate the services and, therefore, should be treated as a single supply with the application of the general rate of VAT to the whole service.

The Resolution refers to the claim number 06371/2012, of June 17th, 2014.

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