| Abstract [eng] |
Economic activity is relevant to the recognition of persons as taxable persons because the identification of who is a taxable person and who is not gives rise to an obligation for taxable persons to pay the relevant taxes to the national budget. It is therefore important to distinguish economic activity from other transactions and to determine on whose basis this distinction is based. Although the concept of economic activity is not new in our legislation, to this day both taxpayers and tax administrations are still confused when interpreting and assessing the activities carried out and their classification as economic. The author believes that this problem is due to the fact that most of the sources that focus on the analysis of economic activities are old and that even in terms of quantity, these is only few of these sources. This paper analyses the concept and evolution of value added tax and the concept of economic activity born out of this tax. It also identifies the characteristics of economic activity through legislation and case-law, and presents the cases in which these characteristics are used to identify economic activity. The work does not focus exclusively on the activities of legal persons, but also describes the activities carried out by natural persons which are considered to be economic. The second part of the work focuses on case law and identifies the relevant problem areas where, in the author's opinion, the most disputes and uncertainties arise for both taxpayers and tax authorities. The following section describes incidental transactions and explains the court's reasoning for distinguishing the concept of incidental transactions from that of economic activity. In the third part, the author examines the practice of selected foreign countries (the Baltic States). It examines how both Estonia and Latvia define economic activity ir their laws and comments on the perceived difference between this case and that of Lithuania. The case law of the national courts of these selected countries, or the case law most often followed by these countries, as well as national court cases that have realched the Court of Justice of the European Union are also selected and analysed. |
