Landmark CJEU Ruling: Invoice Date Cannot Delay VAT Deduction

In its landmark judgment of 11 February 2026, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) confirmed that Polish VAT regulations regarding the right to deduct VAT are incompatible with EU law. Polish VAT regulations stipulate that the right to deduct input VAT arises dependent on the date the invoice is actually received from the supplier. In contrast, the VAT Directive requires only that the taxpayer be in possession of the invoice at the time of filing the VAT return.

Under the legal framework applicable prior to the CJEU ruling, if a taxpayer purchased goods for business purposes on 30 May but the supplier issued the invoice on 10 June, the taxpayer could not deduct VAT for the month of acquisition. Instead, the deduction could be made no earlier than for the VAT return  covering June. In practice, this meant that taxpayers bore the negative consequences of their counterparties’ delays. Moreover, in certain cases, such limitations could have a significant adverse impact on companies’ cash flow.

The CJEU emphasised that the right to deduct VAT depends on fulfilling both substantive requirements (relating to the basis and scope of the right) and formal requirements laid down in the VAT Directive. According to the Court’s settled jurisprudence, and in light of the principles of VAT neutrality and proportionality, the right to deduct must be granted where all substantive requirements are met, even if certain formal requirements have not been complied with.

This means that the emergence of the right to deduct VAT may depend solely on substantive conditions provided for in the VAT Directive. The possession of an invoice should be classified as a formal requirement. However, under Article 178 of the VAT Directive, the taxpayer may exercise the right to deduct only once they are in possession of the invoice. It should be emphasised that the “arising of the right” and the “possibility to exercise the right” are two distinct concepts.