Judgment of the Court of Justice in the case Wolfgang und Dr. Wilfried Rey.
1. Article 17(5) of Sixth Council Directive 77/388/EEC must be interpreted as meaning that, where a building is used in order to carry out certain output transactions in respect of which value added tax is deductible and others in respect of which it is not, the Member States are not required to prescribe that the input goods and services used for the construction, acquisition, use, conservation or maintenance of that building must, in a first stage, be assigned to those various transactions when such assignation is difficult to carry out, in order that, in a second stage, only the deduction entitlement due in respect of those of the goods and services which are used both for certain transactions in respect of which value added tax is deductible and for others in respect of which it is not is determined by applying a turnover-based allocation key or, provided that this method guarantees a more precise determination of the deductible proportion, on the basis of floor area.
2. Article 20 of Sixth Directive 77/388 must be interpreted as requiring valued-added-tax deductions made in respect of goods or services falling within Article 17(5) of that directive to be adjusted following the adoption, during the adjustment period in question, of a value-added-tax allocation key used to calculate those deductions that departs from the method provided for by the directive for determining the deduction entitlement.
3. The general principles of EU law of legal certainty and of the protection of legitimate expectations must be interpreted as not precluding applicable national legislation which does not expressly prescribe an input tax adjustment, within the meaning of Article 20 of the Sixth Directive following amendment of the value-added-tax allocation key used to calculate certain deductions or lay down transitional arrangements although the input tax allocation applied by the taxable person in accordance with the allocation key applicable before that amendment had been recognised as generally reasonable by the supreme court.
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