Judgment_paragraph 36 · SC Terracult SRL v Direcţia Generală Regională a Finanţelor Publice Timişoara –Administraţia Judeţeană a Finanţelor Publice Arad – Serviciul Inspecţie Fiscală Persoane Juridice 5 and ANAF Direcţia Generală Regională a Finanţelor Publice Timişoara Serviciul de Soluţionare a Contestaţiilor (C-835/18)

36With regard to the referring court’s doubts concerning the principle of proportionality, it must be borne in mind that the national legislature is able to attach penalties to the formal obligations of taxable persons to encourage them to comply with those obligations, in order to ensure the proper working of the VAT system and that, accordingly, an administrative fine can be imposed on a taxable person whose application for a refund of the VAT paid but not due is the result of its own negligence (see, to that effect, judgment of 26 April 2018, Zabrus Siret, C‑81/17, EU:C:2018:283, paragraphs 48 and 49).