Question 11705 — value added tax

Summary

Mr. François André draws the attention of the Minister of Action and Public Accounts to the VAT rate applicable to the provision of services such as skinning, degreasing and deboning of meat and meat products, carried out by specialized companies on the premises of their clients, namely groups in the agri-food sector. In the 1990s, a series of tax audits led to companies in this sector to no longer charge VAT at the reduced rate but, on the contrary, to apply the full rate. However, the position today supported by the tax administration is now the opposite since it considers that the service providers wrongly invoiced VAT at the rate of 20% and that they should have invoiced it at the rate of 5.5%, provided for by article 278-0 bis of the general tax code for operations relating to products intended for human consumption. According to the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJCE May 14, 1985, case 139/84) and the Council of State (CE October 16, 1996, no. 138662), the qualification of an operation presupposes that, at the end of the process, a new product has been created by the service provider. It has already been held that operations covering sorting, grading, cleaning, brushing, pruning and application of a paraffin film on nuts before they are packaged, are not sufficient to consider these products as new at the end of these processes. It would seem that the assessment can be the same when it comes to derinding, degreasing and deboning pieces of meat. He therefore asks him to please clarify the Government's position regarding the VAT rate applicable to this type of service and property. wish to indicate to him that the Government does not intend to give the concept of custom work a wider scope than that required by Community law, especially since custom work is not expressly covered by Annex III to Directive No. 2006/112/EC as being subject to invoicing at a reduced VAT rate.

Machine translation from French. The official text remains authoritative.

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