The Court of Justice has given a judgment in the case Mercedes Benz Italia.
The Court (Third Chamber) hereby rules:
Point (d) of the third subparagraph of Article 17(5) and Article 19 of Sixth Council Directive 77/388/EEC must be interpreted as not precluding national rules and practice, such as those at issue in the main proceedings, which require a taxable person:
– to apply to all goods and services which he has acquired a deductible proportion based on turnover, without providing for a method of calculation which is based on the nature and actual destination of each of the goods and services acquired and which objectively reflects the portion of the expenditure actually to be attributed to each of the taxed and untaxed activities; and
– to refer to the composition of his turnover in order to identify transactions which may be classified as ‘incidental', in so far as the assessment carried out for that purpose also takes account of the relationship between those transactions and the taxable activities of that taxable person and, as the case may be, of the use which they entail of the goods and services which are subject to value added tax.
4