Bitcoin Forum

EU Court to Decide Bitcoin's VAT-Status Next Week

“Strictly speaking, the case is about bitcoin exchange services. It's not about bitcoin itself, it's not about bitcoin mining, it's not about paying with bitcoin, or anything else. The court will decide whether exchange services fall within the scope of VAT-based law – that's the first question. If the ECJ decides that bitcoin exchange services do in fact fall within this scope, the second question will answer whether a VAT exemption should apply.”

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/eu-court-to-decide-bitcoin-s-vat-status-next-week-1445013279

This is going to be very important ruling.

I do not think the impact will be big if its decided that bitcoin transactions should be charged VAT but only if such VAT applies to the spread portion only as described in the article.

If however the total value of the transaction becomes subject to VAT then we have a problem as that would have a big effect in my opinion. Essentially all exchange based transactions then, in Europe, will escalate in costs with between 15 to 27 percent and that will have an impact on the business conducted by those exchanges.

I guess most of these exchanges will consider moving to a different places should that happen. First we had the move out of New York by some due to the BitLicence and now we might have another move due to EU VAT regulations.

Well. The EU Court didn't let us down, exchanges should now be exempt from VAT and Bitcoin should be treated as money.
Couple of noticeable press hits:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/11948222/Bitcoin-is-tax-free-European-court-rules.html

http://www.cnbc.com/2015/10/22/bitcoin-now-tax-free-in-europe-after-court-ruling.html

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/806728f4-78af-11e5-a95a-27d368e1ddf7.html#axzz3pKlKdi7nn

http://fortune

And this news goes down in the mass of shitty and unrevelant news even if it is the biggest BTC event since few years xD

This community really has a huge problem.

Well, there was a small celebration thread on main board yesterday. Other thing is, most people here seems to be from US, so any news from the 'old continent' might not sound very exciting to them. Just my guess.

i agree with your point. there are several very important news that the mass of the btc people dont recognize as important. but these people freak out when the price is changing 30 USD up or down  ;D

Here's the link to the full EU Court's judgement, if anyone's interested:

http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?docid=170305&mode=req&pageIndex=1&dir=&occ=first&part=1&text=&doclang=EN&cid=844985