On March 31, 2025, the Federal Ministry of Finance published a revised version of section 2.5 of the VAT Application Decree (UStAE), which requires a change to the documents for the settlement of EEG funding in the relationship between the DSO and TSO for so-called subsidized self-consumption in accordance with Section 33 (2) EEG 2009.
For cases of decentralized consumption, the VAT Application Decree (UStAE) previously assumed that all of the electricity generated in the plant was initially supplied to the operator of the public electricity grid and that the decentralized electricity consumed by the plant operator itself was supplied back to the plant operator by the grid operator. The consequence of this fiction for VAT purposes was that a VAT invoice must be issued for both the outward delivery by the system operator to the grid operator and the return delivery by the grid operator to the system operator. As a rule, this is done uniformly by the grid operator, who issues a corresponding credit note for the fictitious outward and return deliveries. To date, we have also applied this procedure accordingly in the billing relationship between DSOs and TSOs.
It has been established by the highest court that only the quantities actually fed into the grid are to be invoiced as a taxable and taxable supply of electricity. The directly consumed quantities are no longer depicted as fictitious outward and return deliveries (see BFH rulings from March 15, 2022 V R 34/20 and from November 09, 2022, XI R 31/19).
The new regulations apply to all open cases. However, until January 1, 2026, there will be no objections if companies still act in accordance with the old version of the VAT application decree. The TSOs are therefore planning the changeover from the 01/2026 performance period. For sales carried out before January 01, 2026, we will settle the receipts in accordance with the previous accounting rules. This means that, for example, the 2025 annual statement and subsequent corrections for previous years up to and including the 2025 performance period can continue to be settled using the previous procedure of outward and return delivery.
Finally, we would like to point out that the changes described do not entail any changes to the recording of electricity quantities in the data reports and the remuneration categories to be used (SgK334...). These will continue unchanged for the affected generation facilities.
The grid operators will receive information on data reporting, billing and presentation of self-consumption on the receipts from their responsible transmission system operator in good time before January 01, 2026.
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