38In that regard, it is apparent from the case-law of the Court that the possibility of exercising the right of deduction without any temporal limit would be contrary to the principle of legal certainty, which requires the tax position of the taxable person, in the light of his rights and obligations vis-à-vis the tax authority, not to be open to challenge indefinitely. Therefore, a limitation period the expiry of which has the effect of penalising a taxable person who has not been sufficiently diligent and has failed to claim deduction of input tax, by making him forfeit his right of deduction, cannot be regarded as incompatible with the regime established by the VAT Directive, in so far as, first, that limitation period applies in the same way to analogous rights in tax matters founded on domestic law and to those founded on EU law (principle of equivalence) and, second, that it does not in practice render impossible or excessively difficult the exercise of the right of deduction (principle of effectiveness) (see, to that effect, judgment of 12 July 2012, EMS-Bulgaria Transport, C‑284/11, EU:C:2012:458, paragraphs 48 and 49 and the case-law cited).
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