The European Court ruled not to impose VAT transactions on bitcoins

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    Breakdown of fetters The

    European Court, the highest instance of the Court of Justice of the European Union, issued a decision in principle (albeit preliminary) for the bitcoin community in Luxembourg last week : the court found that operations with bitcoins should be exempt from paying value added tax. The trial on this issue was initiated three years ago at the request of the founders of the Swedish Bitcoin.se resource .

    At the hearings held last week, except for the representative of Bitcoin.se Daniel Hadquist and his lawyer, there were: four representatives of the Swedish tax service (who, naturally, supported similar tax), the representative of Germany and members of the special European Commission (opposed to the tax).

    The representative of Germany also advocated the need to introduce VAT for operations with bitcoins. He tried to convince the court that Bitcoin was a niche product, that it did not have a fixed price, and made other similar arguments.

    Each party had 15 minutes to describe their point of view on the case to five judges.

    Court sentenced:
    Bitcoins are a currency. Owning them does not have any other purpose than the possibility of their reuse as a currency in the future. In this regard, they must be considered like any legal currency from the point of view of calculating value added tax.

    Representatives of the Swedish tax service were dissatisfied with such a decision, and considered that the arguments of the court were unconvincing, and that the court misunderstood the formulation of the issue.

    Headquist, used the services of a lawyer of one of the most prestigious European companies Mannheimer Swartling, whose work was paid by representatives of the Swedish bitcoin industry, who rightly reasoned that exemption from such a tax would be beneficial for them.

    Hadvkist said: “For representatives of this business, this decision will be very important, because the size of their commissions depends on it. And for the bitcoins themselves, the ability to classify them with ordinary currencies is also very important. New technologies should not be hindered by lagging obsolete laws and regulations. ”

    The European Directorate of Taxes (Directorate-General for Taxation and Customs Union) in April already exempted operations with bitcoins in Spain, the UK and Germany from VAT, on the grounds that bitcoins are a means of payment or a financial instrument, therefore they must be classified as a financial service rather than property or goods.

    If the preliminary decision remains valid, then the VAT will disappear from operations with bitcoins in a large number of European countries.

    In Russia, the status of bitcoins has not yet been officially determined. At first, the Central Bank tended to completely ban operations with them, but then, thanks to lengthy consultations, began to change its point of view . In addition, in a positive vein on virtual currencies, he spoke in his recent speechPresident of Russia.

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