Petrol companies, such as Vapo Atlantic, will have more difficulty winning lawsuits against the tax authorities to reclaim the roadside assistance (CSR) for the past three years, as the taxes charged to consumers have been on the invoice receipt since September 2020 . And only if that fee, which is levied on fuel, is not reflected in the final price, can the oil company be reimbursed, explained Dinheiro Vivo, the specialist in tax and business law, Rogério M. Fernandes Ferreira, founder of the company RFF Advocaten .
“Under the terms of ERSE Regulation No. 141/2020, from September (inclusive) 2020, petrol stations are required to specify the Petroleum Products Tax (ISP) on invoices for the sale of fuel to final consumers and if they do not” t, they issue the invoices illegally, so the tax authorities can say that the gas stations have illegally issued the invoice receipt, without having to return the CSR,” details Rogério Fernandes.
The problem is that the receipt only shows the Petroleum Products Tax (ISP), which contains the values related to the carbon tax and the CSR. So if a reseller or end consumer wants to know whether or not he pays road tax, he will have to make some calculations.
As an example, and using the values applied in 2020, Rogério Fernandes Ferreira shows that the consumer, in ISP and CO2 only, and without passing on the road tax, spends 0.58 euros per liter of petrol and 0.40 euros per liter of diesel paid . If you add the road toll, the tax assessment increases by about eight cents, to 0.66 euros, in the first case and by 11 cents, to 0.51 euros, in the second situation.
Until December 31, 2022, the value of the CSR was 8.7 cents per liter of petrol, 11 euro cents per liter of diesel and 12.3 cents per kilogram of LPG car. Since January 1 of this year, the CSR has been included in the ISP, a government measure to circumvent the EU veto on charging the fee and prevent new lawsuits.
Recently, the tax authorities were ordered to reimburse 5.5 million euros to the Vapo gas station plus interest for the wrongful collection of the CSR in 2018, a fee that was considered illegal by the Court of Justice of the European Union, as reported by Dinheiro Vivo. But the oil company will not have the same luck if it wants to recover the amounts related to the past three years.
Fernandes Ferreira revealed that “there are matters related to 2020, 2021 and 2022 that will also be reviewed by the Administrative Arbitration Center (CAAD)”. In these cases, “the gas station can already be caught if it has not issued receipts including taxes,” he points out. Nevertheless, and even if you discriminate against the ISP, the aforementioned calculations will be necessary to understand whether or not the CSR had an impact on the consumer. Then it is the end users, namely large transport companies, who can claim a refund from the Tax and Customs Administration.
Salomé Pinto is a journalist for Dinheiro Vivo
Source: DN
