9.7.1 The supply of a voucher as such should not be considered a supply that is subject to VAT because transferring a voucher is neither the supply of a good nor a service

Only the supply of goods and services are subject to VAT.1 Goods are tangible objects, which means that if anything, the supply of a vouchers as such would be considered the supply of a service.2 Even though the CJEU has, in one case, stated that the supply of a voucher is indeed a taxable supply of a service,3 in my view, this is not a correct assertion, as is also apparent from the fact that the CJEU has often ruled that the supply of voucher is actually not a taxable supply at all.4

As mentioned in Section 9.5.2.3, I also don’t agree with the current EU VAT treatment of issuing and transferring SPVs, which dictate that this should be treated as the supply of the goods or services to which the SPV relates.

A voucher is an instrument that embodies or evidences the right of the holder of that voucher to be the recipient of a supply of goods or services, or of a preferential treatment, e.g. a discount on the price of an underlying transaction. In Section 9.3, I described the reasons why, in my view, the supply of a voucher should not be considered the supply of a service (i.e. the transfer of a right). Basically, this can be traced back to the fact that fact the supply of a voucher is not the actual ‘object’ of a supply for VAT purposes, where the supply of other ‘rights’ are supplies that are subject to VAT in their own right, such as the supply of intellectual property rights or the right to use a good for a specified period of time.5 In these situations, the supply results in actual ‘consumption’ (as an EU VAT concept), as I will now explain.