France Rebuilds Aviation VAT Exemption List on 2025 Traffic Data as EU Member States Apply Divergent Thresholds

The French tax administration republished BOI-ANNX-000215 on 23 September 2026, its list of French airlines presumed to meet the condition for VAT exemption under Article 262, II-4° of the Code général des impôts, rebuilt using 2025 traffic data.

France requires international services to represent at least 80 per cent of total operations, measured in unités de trafic kilomètre transporté, where one unit equals 1,000 passengers or 100 tonnes of freight. Ireland's Revenue sets its threshold at more than 50 per cent use on international routes. The United Kingdom names no percentage at all; HMRC accepts turnover, number of flights, seats, passengers, freight volume or distance as the measure, provided the result is fair, reasonable and verifiable. Germany's Federal Ministry of Finance publishes its own list, annexed to a letter dated 2 January 2026, covering operators established in Germany that predominantly conduct international commercial air transport under § 4 Nr. and § 8 Abs.

France operates a second annex, BOI-ANNX-000216, naming foreign airlines presumed not to qualify. That list carries a date stamp of 17 December 2013 and has not been updated since, leaving eight carriers — business aviation operators among them — assessed on traffic patterns from over a decade ago; the positive list is rebuilt annually while the negative list has sat unchanged for twelve years. Corporate flight departments operated for an owner's own business do not qualify for the exemption under Article 148 because the aircraft is not operated for reward, so those operators pay VAT on virtually all European costs and can only recover it through a refund claim. Once in the refund process, France excludes fuel and lubricants from recovery for non-EU claimants and requires a fiscal representative, Germany does not refund fuel VAT to non-EU claimants at all, and Croatia excludes aircraft purchase and lease. For EU-established claimants, Article 15(1) of Directive 2008/9/EC closes the 2025 refund year on 30 September 2026, with the right lost rather than delayed; non-EU claimant deadlines vary, with Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Austria, Finland and Croatia running to 30 June and Spain to 30 September.

This is a case of a single EU directive producing materially different national outcomes because Article 148(f) sets the principle — exemption for aircraft used chiefly on international routes for reward — but leaves each Member State to define how that condition is measured. France's unité de trafic kilomètre transporté calculation, Ireland's simple majority-use test, and the UK's open-ended fair-and-reasonable standard are three distinct measuring sticks applied to the same treaty language.

The result is that an operator's VAT status depends on jurisdiction as much as on its actual flying. A mixed schedule can clear Ireland's 50 per cent bar, satisfy one of the UK's several accepted metrics, and still fall short of France's 80 per cent threshold, with the aircraft and the routes identical in every case. Business aviation operators are exposed twice over: ownership structures routed through a Maltese AOC, a Cayman-registered aircraft on a US certificate, or a Swiss charter arrangement place them off Germany's list entirely, and corporate flight departments flying for an owner's own business fall outside Article 148 altogether, pushing them into the refund system instead of the exemption.

The refund route carries its own traps: fuel and lubricants excluded in France for non-EU claimants, no fuel VAT refunded at all in Germany, aircraft purchase and lease excluded in Croatia, and a fiscal representative required in France. The nearest fixed point is procedural, not analytical: the 2025 EU refund year closes on 30 September 2026 under Article 15(1), and that right lapses outright if missed, while non-EU claimant deadlines split between 30 June and 30 September across the Member States named.