Court of Justice of the European Union
Judgment of 16 June 2016
Case C-200/15
In this Judgment, rendered in the context of a proceeding for failure to fulfil an obligation brought by the European Commission against Portugal, the Court of Justice declared that the application, for the purpose of determining the taxable amount of second -hand vehicles brought into Portuguese territory from another Member State, of a system for the calculation of the depreciation of vehicles which does not take account of the depreciation in the vehicle’s value during its first year of use, or any other depreciation greater than 52% in the case of vehicles more than five years old, doe s not comply with the obligation of Member States to not impose on the products of other Member States any internal taxation in excess of that imposed on similar domestic products, violating Article 110 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.
The Court of Justice further noted that, to prevent a tax system from being contrary to this article, it is not sufficient for the taxpayer to have the possibility of requesting an assessment of the vehicle in question, since this possibility does not attenuate the fact that the table of fixed percentages is discriminatory on those points.
