Parents - subsidiaries

Judgment of the Court (Second Chamber) of 16 July 2015 (request for a preliminary ruling)

 Services supplied to subsidiaries.

The expenditure connected with the acquisition of shareholdings in subsidiaries incurred by a holding company which involves itself in their management and which, on that basis, carries out an economic activity must be regarded as belonging to its general expenditure and the value added tax paid on that expenditure must, in principle, be deducted in full, unless certain output economic transactions are exempt from value added tax under Sixth Directive 77/388, as amended by Directive 2006/69, in which case the right to deduct should have effect only in accordance with the procedures laid down in Article 17(5) of that directive.

The expenditure connected with the acquisition of shareholdings in subsidiaries incurred by a holding company which involves itself in the management only of some of those subsidiaries and which, with regard to the others, does not, by contrast, carry out an economic activity must be regarded as only partially belonging to its general expenditure, so that the value added tax paid on that expenditure may be deducted only in proportion to that which is inherent to the economic activity, according to the criteria for apportioning defined by the Member States, which when exercising that power, must have regard to the aims and broad logic of the Sixth Directive and, on that basis, provide for a method of calculation which objectively reflects the part of the input expenditure actually to be attributed, respectively, to economic and to non-economic activity, which it is for the national courts to establish.