{"id":3270,"date":"2026-07-28T15:13:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-28T14:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ra-moellenhoff.de\/?p=3270"},"modified":"2026-08-19T11:49:48","modified_gmt":"2026-08-19T10:49:48","slug":"intra-community-supply-federal-fiscal-court-bfh-strengthens-protection-of-legitimate-expectations-where-a-confirmation-of-arrival-is-missing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ra-moellenhoff.de\/en\/taxes\/intra-community-supply-federal-fiscal-court-bfh-strengthens-protection-of-legitimate-expectations-where-a-confirmation-of-arrival-is-missing","title":{"rendered":"Intra-Community Supply: Federal Fiscal Court (BFH) Strengthens Protection of Legitimate Expectations Where a Confirmation of Arrival Is Missing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Anyone supplying goods VAT-free to customers in other EU countries must be able to prove that the goods actually reached another EU member state. In practice, this is usually done by means of the so-called confirmation of arrival (Gelangensbest\u00e4tigung<\/em>, Section 17b(2) no. 2 of the German VAT Implementation Ordinance, UStDV), a confirmation of receipt of the goods in the country of destination, signed by the customer. Particularly in collection cases, where the customer transports the goods itself, it happens that this confirmation is never provided, for example because the buyer simply fails to return it. Until now, such cases carried the risk that the supply would subsequently be taxed after all, even where the seller had acted in good faith. By judgment of 18 December 2025 (case no. V R 3\/25), the Federal Fiscal Court (BFH) has corrected this practice in favour of businesses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The case<\/strong>
The claimant, a tax advisor, sold a car to a Romanian company via an internet portal in 2018. Before the sale, he had the buyer’s VAT identification number confirmed by the Federal Central Tax Office (BZSt), obtained a commercial register extract, and checked the photo ID of the person collecting the vehicle at the time of collection. Under the purchase agreement, the buyer undertook to deregister the vehicle domestically and transport it to Romania. Despite repeated reminders, the buyer never returned the confirmation of arrival provided for that purpose; it later emerged that the vehicle had in fact been re-registered in Germany. The tax office subsequently refused the VAT exemption, and the Hesse Fiscal Court dismissed the claimant’s action, holding that, in the absence of a confirmation of arrival, no complete accounting and documentary evidence of the transport to Romania had been provided.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The BFH’s decision<\/strong>
The BFH took a different view and allowed the claimant’s appeal on points of law. In the Senate’s opinion, protection of legitimate expectations under Section 6a(4), first sentence, of the German VAT Act (UStG) does not require the business to be in possession of a confirmation of arrival. The central consideration is that whether a supplier is entitled to protection of legitimate expectations must be assessable already at the time of the supply. By its very nature, however, a confirmation of arrival can only be issued after the transport has been completed; its prerequisites simply do not yet exist at the time of supply. Making it a mandatory precondition for good faith would run counter to the principle of legal certainty, under which a business must know, at the time a transaction is concluded, whether it is entitled to supply the goods VAT-free.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The BFH further makes clear that, even on the wording of the provision, the confirmation of arrival is presented only as one of several possible forms of evidence (“in particular”). The explanatory memorandum to the regulation likewise confirms that documentary evidence may be provided by any admissible means of proof. In the case decided, the written assurance given by the buyer in the purchase agreement to transport the vehicle to another EU member state, taken together with the claimant’s other diligence measures, was therefore sufficient.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What does this mean for practice?<\/strong>
The decision brings significant relief for all businesses that supply goods across borders and rely on collection arrangements, for example in the vehicle, machinery, or wholesale trade. It should be noted that the confirmation of arrival does not thereby lose its significance as evidence of VAT exemption in its own right. It remains the safest and the standard form of evidence envisaged by the legislator. However, the BFH makes clear that the absence of a confirmation of arrival does not automatically negate the seller’s good faith, provided the seller exercised all reasonable diligence at the time of the supply itself.
In practice, this means the following: for every intra-Community supply, in particular where goods are collected by customers not previously known to the seller, the following should continue to be carefully documented:<\/p>\n\n\n\n