Inadmissibility decision concerning the Netherlands
The Court has declared inadmissible the application in the case of Italmoda Mariano Previti and Others v. the Netherlands.
The applicant company had acquired goods from vendors in the Netherlands and Germany for resale to clients in Italy and had applied the “zero-rate” tariff for sales carried out in the European Union. In 2002 and 2005 the tax authorities issued supplementary tax assessments on the grounds that the company had not complied with the conditions for applying the zero-rate exemption, on account of fraudulent activity.
The Court found that the supplementary tax assessments issued to the applicant company could not be considered as amounting to a “penalty” within the meaning of the principle ‘no punishment without law’ of the Convention. In particular, they did not concern the imposition of tax fines but the obligation to pay reassessed tax liabilities, did not pursue a punitive aim and, although the amounts were considerable, they had been based on a standard calculation of the tax owed.