Parking control fees face VAT even as sanctions

Control fees charged by private parking companies are consideration for a taxable supply of services even where national law treats them as partly punitive or deterrent.Skatteverket Skatteverket's guidance now follows the General Court's order of 4 September 2026Europa in T-131/26 Europark Estonia, paragraphs 43–45: the fee's purpose is not decisiveSkatteverket. What decides is whether a legal relationship exists within which the parties exchange reciprocal performances.Skatteverket

The dispute concerned Europark Estonia OÜEuropa, which manages private car parks under general terms imposing flat contractual penalties of 60 or 100 euros for breaching parking conditions, re-imposable at intervals of at least 24 hours while the breach continues, expressly without replacing the parking charge itself. After the Court of Justice held in C-90/20 Apcoa Parking (20 January 2022) that such control fees are consideration for parking servicesSkatteverket, the Estonian tax authority MTA changed its practice and assessed Europark for 322,525.11 euros of VAT on 1,573,233.65 euros of undeclared penalty turnover for February 2023 to April 2024. The Tallinn administrative court referred questions asking whether the punitive component of the penalty, which under Estonian law complements rather than compensates loss, must be split off from VAT. The General Court answered by reasoned order under Article 226 of its Rules of Procedure, the answer being clearly deducible from Apcoa Parking and T-643/24 Credidam (11 February 2026).

Four arguments failed. That the penalty is flat, with no economic link to the value of the parking, is irrelevant: the amount of the consideration, whether equal to, above or below the supplier's costs, cannot break the direct linkEuropa (Apcoa, paragraph 45). That the penalty does not replace the parking charge is irrelevant: Union law counts surcharges and additional costs as consideration where they result from applying the legal framework governing the provider-customer relationship, even for unlawful or irregular useEuropa (Credidam, paragraph 47). That national law labels the sum a penalty is irrelevant: whether payment is consideration is a question of Union law decided independently of national labels such as remuneration, indemnity or penaltyEuropa (C-295/17 MEO, paragraph 69; Apcoa, paragraph 46). And that the penalty aims to deter is irrelevant: the objective pursued by a payment is not what makes considerationEuropa; the legal relationship with reciprocal exchange is (C-16/93 Tolsma). There is therefore no splitting: the penalties form one indivisible consideration under the car park's general terms, directly linked to the parking service as a wholeEuropa.

For Swedish practice this confirms Apcoa ParkingSkatteverket with the punitive-component question closedSkatteverket: private operators charge VAT on the full control-fee amounts, including any part national law would call a sanctionEuropa. The order is available in Estonian and French; it has not been published in the Court's reports and exists in no Swedish version.

Legal basis: Article 2(1)(c) of Council Directive 2006/112/EC on the common system of VAT; C-90/20 Apcoa Parking Danmark; General Court order of 4 September 2026 in T-131/26 Europark Estonia.