BERTELSMANN CASE
August 1st, 2001
BY ALAN OSBORNBOOK club companies must pay value added tax on the costs of delivering gifts in kind to existing customers as a reward for bringing in new business, the European Court of Justice has ruled. The judgement came in a case involving clubs operated by the German media giant Bertelsmann between 1985 and 1990 when books, records and bicycles were given to subscribers in return for the introduction of new members.Bertelsmann's claim that the cost of transporting these gifts were excluded from sales taxes by the EU's Sixth Directive on VAT was rejected by a ...
Full access to this article can be arranged with permission from the client that first ordered it. Please contact us to request access. Entries are uploaded to our archive at least one year after being published by a client – free access is restricted to International News Services journalists for background research only. The article date indicates when copy was filed to a client, not when posted to this archive. Upon client requests, International News Services will remove such articles from the archive or not upload them in the first place. They are included to demonstrate the breadth of topics undertaken by the agency and also to help promote clients’ coverage.