33As regards the possibility, under Article 183 of the VAT Directive, of providing that excess VAT is to be carried forward to the following tax period or refunded, the Court has made it clear that, while the Member States have a certain freedom in determining the conditions for the refund of excess VAT, those conditions cannot undermine the principle of fiscal neutrality by making the taxable person bear the burden of the VAT in whole or in part. In particular, such conditions must enable the taxable person, in appropriate circumstances, to recover the entirety of the credit arising from that excess VAT. This implies that the refund is made within a reasonable period of time by a payment in liquid funds or equivalent means, and that, in any event, the method of refund adopted must not entail any financial risk for the taxable person (see Commission v Italy, paragraphs 32 to 34, and Sosnowska, paragraph 17).