Transaction-related grounds for eligibility for tax credit: overview of the case-law of the Supreme Court of Ukraine

Abstract

The purpose of the study is to determine the transaction-related grounds for the right to a tax credit that are covered in the case-law of the Supreme Court of Ukraine. The relevance of this topic arises from the fact that there is insufficient cohesion in the scientific literature on the understanding of the whole spectrum of these grounds in their interrelation by administrative courts. As a result of the study, the author points out that the transaction-related grounds for the right to a tax credit are: (1) the genuineness of transactions for the purchase of goods/services; (2) the orientation of these transactions to the increase (preserve) taxpayer’s assets and/or its value, as well as to the creation of conditions for that in the future; (3) using the relevant goods/services in the taxpayer’s business activities and in transactions subject to value-added tax; (4) keeping sufficient record of business transactions in source documents and their congruence with the taxpayer’s contracts. It is also noteworthy, the failure of the taxpayer’s counterparty to fulfill their obligation to pay their value-added tax duties, their registration and management of its activities by figureheads, the lack of material, technical and labor resources for carrying out business transactions and other tax information regarding the taxpayer’s counterparties in the supply chain are circumstances that are not of decisive importance and must be assessed in the context of specific business transactions at the time of specific business transactions and in view of other circumstances that confirm or refute the movement of assets and funds between counterparties. Similarly, presentation of unreliable information in source documents, them being issued by an unauthorized person, incomplete disclosure of some details of business transactions and other deficiencies of source documents do not entail their non-inclusion in tax accounting, if from the set of documents containing information about the business transaction, it is possible to establish the its date, essence and scale, as well as to identify the business actors who participated in the business transaction.