News article

New VAT rules for fuel cards coming up?

Following thorough discussions within the VAT Committee on the ruling of the European Court of Justice in the Vega case (C-235/18 dated May 15, 2019), Member States have almost unanimously agreed that in a lot of cases the issuer of a fuel card does not supply fuel but provides a financial service (VAT Committee guideline 1068).

However, the card issuer will be deemed to purchase and sell the fuel itself if the following conditions are met:

• The card issuer must take ownership of the fuel – this includes also bearing the financial risk towards the supplier if the cardholder does not pay in the end, also bearing the risk for the losses the cardholder would incur if there were something wrong with the fuel and the issuer setting its own prices towards the cardholder.
• It must be the same fuel that is purchased and sold.
• There must be an agreement between the card issuer and the fuel supplier whereby the issuer acts on behalf of the supplier or on behalf of the cardholder and where there is no reference to the granting of credit or the administration of fuel delivery.

Importantly, these new guidelines do not apply to the past. We can assume that the Belgian administration will adopt and comment on these views in a yet-to-be-published circular within the near future.