Adjustment and repayment of VAT. The validity of decision from the VAT Appeals Board.
Supreme Court judgment 4 September 2020, HR-2020-1732-A, (case no. 19-191169SIV-HRET), civil case, appeal against judgment.
Trysil Fageråsen Eiendom AS (Counsel Alexander With) v. The State represented by the Tax Office (The Office of the Attorney General represented by Simen Skjold Søgaard)
Justices: Møse, Matheson, Normann, Arntzen, Høgetveit Berg
An uncompleted hotel building was sold to a buyer that had not voluntarily registered for letting of real property, see section 2-3 of the VAT Act. The sale triggered an obligation for the seller to undertake a combined adjustment of input VAT by transferring deducted VAT in its entirety, see section 9-3 subsection 2 of the VAT Act. This was not done. The buyer completed the hotel, voluntarily registered for letting, and claimed adjustment in the form of deduction for parts of the VAT that the seller was obliged to reverse. This was not approved by the tax authorities. The Supreme Court found like the previous instances that the right to adjustment for the party acquiring the relevant capital goods was conditional on the transferor at the time of the adjustment event in fact having fulfilled its obligation undertake a combined adjustment of input VAT. The appeal against the Court of Appeal's judgment, that dismissed the appeal against the District Court's judgment in favour of the defendant, was dismissed.