The first part, the written submission, was fully funded by a single donor (a major industry member). Now I'm looking for ways to fund the rest of the process. I have 2.8 bitcoin that I received through crowdfunding but that's all, nothing from any major players.

I have posted a new update about the case.

tl;dr

• Germany and Estonia argued against VAT exemption.
• The EU commission argued in favor of VAT exemption. Their submission also included the "preliminary view" of the UK, also in favor of exemption.
• I have the possibility to request an oral hearing (but there might be an oral hearing anyway). If there is an oral hearing I'll need to raise more funds.

I have now posted an update on Reddit. I will also update the original post here to reflect that information.

There is quite a popular thread on Reddit now on what this case is really about so I will copy the comment that I made there.

Yes, that was the disagreement in Sweden between Skatterättsnämnden and Skatteverket, whether VAT should be applied to the commission or not. I guess that question (c) could come up in some of the arguments though if other EU countries choose to intervene in the proceedings.

Good advice, thanks.


Actually, the EU isn't proposing anything. In Sweden there was disagreement between Skatterättsnämnden (government agency that give advance rulings in tax questions) and Skatteverket (the tax authority) on how to interpret Article 135(1) in the EU directive on VAT. They were in agreement that exchanging Bitcoin <-> traditional currency was not "consumtion" so they didn't suggest to add VAT to the bitcoins but Skatteverket believes that it should be added to commission taken by e.g. exchanges.

So, the EU court will now decide exactly how to interpret the directive regarding Bitcoin.

Yes, I think that you're right about that. Anyone who can point me to the right person to reach out to at such businesses, please send me a PM or an e-mail. I'm afraid that it'll be lost as spam if I start sending what looks like begging e-mails to info@bitpay, info@bitstamp etc.

Update 26th of August

I have great news! One donor (who wants to remain anonymous for now) has agreed to cover all costs for the written submission that is due in a few weeks. This made it possible for me to hire Mannheimer Swartling, a very reputable Swedish law firm with the necessary experience of the EU court as well as VAT questions related to financial institutions. This means that I am not looking for more funds at this point. We will assess the financial situation again if and when there is an oral hearing coming up. At that point it might be necessary to raise more funds.

Big thanks to everyone who has contributed so far! (money, legal assistance, contacts etc. – I have received a lot of friendly e-mails and phone calls this past week).

I now have a lot of contacts that can offer insight into the situation in other EU countries. I will pass this information on to my lawyer and we will of course try to learn as much as possible about the legal status in other countries but there won't be time to talk to everyone. There is one thing that everyone in other EU countries can do to help and that is to lobby your own government! All EU countries have the oppurtunity to intervene in the case and the more countries we have on our side the better.

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Original post

As some of you may already know there is an ongoing case regarding Bitcoin and VAT exemption in Sweden and the EU. The Supreme Administrative Court (“Högsta förvaltningsdomstolen”) has now requested a preliminary ruling from the EU Court of Justice. The case, C-264/14, can be found here and has been covered quite a lot in media (Bloomberg, Law360, CoinDesk).

I got involved in this simply by asking for an advance ruling in Sweden because I wanted to start selling bitcoin on my site bitcoin.se. It has now escalated and I find myself in a situation where my case will likely decide if and how VAT should be applied to Bitcoin throughout the EU.

It took me a while to realize the significance of this case and I have to appoint a top law firm team here in Sweden that can prepare a written submission (and we’re short on time here - this has to be done in 3 weeks) as well as a potential oral hearing later on. The Swedish counsel will also cooperate with interested parties throughout Europe to get input and support from other European countries if deemed necessary. I am currently discussing with teams at three of Swedens top firms in VAT and EU-law. After asking about the costs I have received fee estimates that range from 22 000 to 38 000 EUR (approximately 56 to 96 bitcoin at the time of writing).

So here is my problem. There is no way that I can finance this personally. I don’t have enough commercial interest in the case to throw all of my savings on it, the business that we wanted to start on bitcoin.se has not been launched so there is no money there. This is why I am now reaching out to the Bitcoin community.

Disclaimer: Donating is in no way a guarantee that we will win the case but if I can’t raise the money the risks are dramatically increased that I will lose since I will have to deal with the court proceedings on my own (which one of the parties I have discussed the case with has described as “catastrophical” for Bitcoin in Europe).

If the donated money is in excess of the costs I will donate the excess funds to Bitcoin organizations in Europe. If, for some reason, none of the funds raised are used I will return all bitcoins to the sender address (so make sure that you donate from an address that you control!)

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Please send your donations to this Bitcoin address:
(no more donations necessary at this point)
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About me
My name is David Hedqvist and have been running bitcoin.se since early 2012. I am a moderator of the Scandinavian forum section at bitcointalk.org and I have also been a moderator at bitcoin.stackexchange.com since its launch.

I will post this message on bitcoin.se, on bitcointalk.org where my name is D.H. and on Reddit where my name is D_H_. If you read about the case on curia.europa.eu or in media you can confirm that the case is about David Hedqvist and bitcoin.se. Feel free to send me a PM or an e-mail to david@bitcoin.se if you have any questions.

You may also contact Dr. Thaer Sabri (thaer@flawlessmoney.com), Chief Executive of Electronic Money Association, to confirm the legitimacy of this fund raiser.

Please don't misquote me like that, I certainly never said that Finnish looks messy compared to the other languages. I said that mixing different languages in the same forum gets messy.


You really make it sound like I have something against Finland. This is not about that. We can have a forum in Finnish, a forum in English and/or a forum in Swedish/Danish/Norwegian, it's all fine with me. If we're serious about creating a community with all the Nordic countries the language should probably be English, cause it won't be easy for people from Finland to become part of a community here if 90% of everything is written in Danish, Norwegian or Swedish.


I posted the initial guidelines a few weeks ago , in English, and left the thread open for comments and suggestions. But sure, we can have a poll too, no problem.


I know. I specifically called them 'awesome' in the guidelines.

This is true (for the most common definition), but not very relevant to the discussion. "Scandinavian" happens to be the name of the forum right now but these local boards are about local communities and if we feel that such a community should include Finland, Iceland etc., then we can just change the name. So please don't turn this thread into a discussion about the definition of Scandinavia.

I don't mind having a discussion about this but then you'll have to give me a bit more than one-line-answers. Is the problem that there is no place to post in Finnish? That we exclude Finland from the definition of "Scandinavia"? Is it about people living in Denmark, Norway and Sweden that only speak Finnish? Help me out.

If we make a "Nordic" forum the language would have to be English. Having different languages (that not everybody understands) mixed in the same forum is just messy. So one solution would be two have 2 forums, one "Nordic" where the language is English and one "Scandinavian" where the language is Swedish/Danish/Norwegian.

Det är inte förbjudet att diskutera altcoins. Men starta i så fall en tråd, berätta om vad som är speciellt med denna coin och varför du tycker att den är intressant. Inled en diskussion, publicera inte en "annons", ok?

Jag kommer att gå lite på känsla här, och de "reklammeddelanden" som redan fanns men där folk börjat diskutera har jag låtit vara kvar.

Har lagt upp ett första förslag på guidelines. Använd gärna den här tråden för att diskutera.

Welcome to the Scandinavian forum! We don't have a lot of rules but

• Posts should be in Danish, Norwegian or Swedish (or sometimes English, see below for details). The reason that we use the strictest definition of Scandinavia and don't allow posts in Finnish or Icelandic is that we want all posts to be understandable by everyone. One of the main reasons for having this forum is to build a local community and if we would allow other languages we would simply get multiple communities in one forum. But that doesn't mean that all you awesome people from Finland and Iceland are totally banned here, because...
  
  
• Sometimes we allow posts in English. One great example of this would be when our Finnish friends want to have a meetup in Stockholm. Or if someone is going to Sweden for a holiday and wants some help from fellow Bitcoiners. Also, people living in Scandinavia that only speak English but want to connect with Scandinavians are welcome to post in English.
  
  
• Advertisements and announcements of new products and services are generally not allowed unless they specifically target a Scandinavian audience. So, translating an announcement of a random altcoin to one of the Scandinavian languages is not enough, but announcing a new Danish Bitcoin exchange is totally fine.

 

We have earlier decided that the Scandinavian forum should be in Swedish, Danish and Norwegian only. It's not that we don't like you (we do!) but the fact is that the people in Norway, Sweden and Denmark can understand eachother's languages quite well, while Finnish is impossible for us to understand.

I will try to write a sticky this weekend with some guidelines for the Scandinavian forum and this rule will likely be in there. Feel free to argue against it.

Jag ska försöka skriva ihop en "sticky" med några guidelines om vad som är OK på det skandinaviska forumet. Jag lutar åt att vi inte alls tillåter rena "announcements" av altcoins. Det finns bokstavligen hundratals altcoins och intressant information ska inte behöva drunkna i sådant.

Åsikter om annat som bör stå i denna sticky välkomnas förstås.

Everyone, this forum is for discussion in the Scandinavian languages (and sometimes in English for Bitcoin topics related to Scandinavia). This looks like a general discussion in English.

Kanske ska ta och reda ut några saker här. Det skatteverket har överklagat handlar om moms på provisionen för företag som köper/säljer bitcoins (växlar bitcoin mot kronor och vice versa), inte om moms på bitcoin i sig. Detta framgår mycket tydligare i DI:s artikel: ”Målet är inte att momsbelägga köpet av Bitcoins. Men det skulle kunna vara moms på själva växlingsavgiften”, slår Martin Loeb fast.


Det här avser alltså växling bitcoin <-> kronor och det är därför bra och rimligt att de anser att det inte medför någon egentlig konsumtion eftersom det då betyder att det inte ska momsbeläggas.

The price you're looking at is the "global average", i.e. the average of all currencies. 789.00 is the USD average.