The concept of abuse in tax matters within European Union law

Abstract

The principle of prohibition of abuse of rights is applicable in fields as varied as the free movement of goods (judgment of 10 of January 1985, Association des Centres distributeurs Leclerc and Thouars Distribution, Case 229/83), freedom to provide services (judgment of 3 of February 1993, Veronica Omroep Organisatie, Case C‑148/91), public service contracts (judgment of 11 of December 2014, Azienda sanitaria locale n. 5 Spezzino and Others, Case C‑113/13), freedom of establishment (judgment of 9 of March 1999, Centros, Case C‑212/97), company law (judgment of 23 of March 2000, Diamantis, Case C‑373/97), social security (judgments of 2 of May 1996, Paletta, Case C‑206/94; of 6 of February 2018, Altun and Others, Case C‑359/16; and of 11 of July 2018, Commission v Belgium, Case C‑356/15), transport (judgment of 6 of April 2006, Agip Petroli, Case C‑456/04), social policy (judgment of 28 of July 2016, Kratzer, Case C‑423/15), restrictive measures (judgment of 21 of December 2011, Afrasiabi and Others, Case C‑72/11) and value added tax (judgment of 21 of February 2006, Halifax and Others, Case C‑255/02) and, in that sense, the EU principle of prohibition of abuse of law has been developing within the jurisprudence of the Court of Justice of the European Union since the mid-1970s, addressing it in multiple ways, not only in the face of different factual assumptions, which would be understandable and even necessary but, in its evolution, treating asymmetrically the handling of the requirements that must be met to reach the conclusion of the existence of practices abusive.