The European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled on Thursday that the Portuguese calculation of the tax on vehicles registered in another EU Member State is contrary to EU law.
The judgment now revealed responds to a question sent by the Arbitration Tax Court and is based on the complaint of a citizen who, in 2021, wanted to register a plug-in hybrid car with a German license plate from 2018 and made a request to that effect.
According to the ECJ, the competent customs authority concluded that the full tax rate should be applied to this vehicle and issued a settlement act to that effect, which was paid by the complainant.
The owner then filed a request for the establishment of an arbitration court in order to challenge the settlement act, which consulted the European court.
Now the European Court of Justice has made it known that “EU law opposes this calculation if, and to the extent that, the amount of tax charged on the same imported vehicle exceeds the amount of the residual value of the tax that is incorporated into the value of similar national vehicles present in the national market for used vehicles”.
Regarding legislative changes to the calculation of the circulation tax on imported used vehicles, the ECJ believes that “such legislative reforms do not appear to be capable of guaranteeing, on their own, an application of the tax compatible with the EU law provision that prohibits discriminatory internal provisions”.
