Judgment_paragraph 59 · CTT - Correios de Portugal v Autoridade Tributária e Aduaneira (C-661/18)

59In this respect, it should be borne in mind that, pursuant to the principle of legal certainty, 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 to deduct, cannot be regarded as incompatible with the regime established by the VAT Directive, in so far as, first, that 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 to deduct (principle of effectiveness) (judgment of 26 April 2018, Zabrus Siret, C‑81/17, EU:C:2018:283, paragraph 38).