ECJ rules that invoices can be corrected retrospectively to justify VAT claim

30 September 2016

A recent European Court of Justice ruling stated that VAT invoices can be corrected retrospectively to justify VAT reclaimed in a VAT return.

The case concerned a Taxpayer that corrected purchase invoices by inserting suppliers' VAT registration numbers during and after a VAT inspection by the German tax authorities. The tax authorities then sought to disregard the date of the invoices for reclaim purposes and wanted to delay the right to the recovery of the purchase VAT until the dates that the corrections to the invoices were made.

The ECJ ruled that, as the original invoices were held when the VAT was claimed, the correction of the omissions should not change the date when the company can claim the VAT meaning that the deduction in the original VAT returns were valid (Senatex GmbH: C-518/14).