22.9.2014   

EN

Official Journal of the European Union

C 329/3

1.

The Court of Justice of the European Union has ruled that the third subparagraph of Article 17(5) of Sixth Council Directive 77/388/EEC (1) of 17 May 1977 on the harmonisation of the laws of the Member States relating to turnover taxes (‘the Sixth Directive’) allows Member States, for the purposes of calculating the proportion of input VAT deductible for a given operation, such as the construction of a mixed-use building, to give precedence, as the key to allocation, to an allocation key other than that based on turnover appearing in Article 19(1) of the Sixth Directive, on condition that the method used guarantees a more precise determination of that deductible proportion (judgment in Case C-511/10 BLC Baumarkt [EU:C:2012:689]).

2.

Is Article 20 of the Sixth Directive to be interpreted as meaning that the adjustment provided for in that provision as regards the initial input tax deduction applies also to circumstances in which a taxable person has attributed input tax arising from the construction of a mixed-use building in accordance with the turnover method provided for in Article 19(1) of the Sixth Directive and permitted by national law, and during the adjustment period a Member State subsequently provides that a different allocation key is to take precedence?

3.

If the answer to the previous question is in the affirmative: Do the principles of legal certainty and the protection of legitimate expectations preclude the application of Article 20 of the Sixth Directive if, for cases of the type described above, the Member State has neither expressly required input tax to be adjusted nor made any transitional provision, and if the input tax attribution applied by the taxable person in accordance with the turnover method had previously been recognised by the Bundesfinanzhof as being generally appropriate?