The purpose of this thesis is to shed light on the scope of application of the Danish VAT Act § 13, subsection 1, No. 10 and 11, in relation to subcontractor services. The EU's development of the single European market has found it necessary to regulate and harmonize the individual member states' internal taxes, including value added tax. The EU's taxation model has a wide area of application, so that all deliveries of goods and services are, as a starting point, covered by the duty to pay tax. As an exception to the tax for VAT, there are a number of VAT exemptions that include services connected to the financial sector. A transaction's exemption from VAT taxation will, as a starting point, be to the advantage of the purchaser when this is a private person, provided that the exemption affects the price determination in the purchaser's favour. In that context, the overriding purpose of the exemption provision is to ensure ample access to the services and influence the behavior of increased consumption, including ensuring access to the current delivery for a wider circle of recipients

In response to the overall positive purpose of VAT-exempt services, a particular problem has occured regarding the VAT exemptions in the VAT system. The lack of clear definitions in the exemption provisions has resulted in several questions of principle submitted to the European Court of Justice regarding the interpretation of the provisions. Furthermore, the lack of clear definition for VAT excemptions, has led to an undermining of these excemptions and the VAT system itself. The distinction between VAT-liable transactions and VAT-exempt transactions regarding financial services has led to a number of challenges, including the exemption provisions' more precisely defined scope of application. Subcontractor services, defined according to their intermediary role, are in the exemption provisions dealing with insurance services and financial services directly added to the provisions, where the exempt service is directly linked to the rest of the provision. The terms broker, intermediary and negotiations in the provisions share the common denominator of being expressions covered by third-party activities, where the legal person performs tasks on behalf of someone else. In response to the overall positive purpose of VAT-exempt services, a particular problem has occured regarding the VAT exemptions in the VAT system.

Subcontractors play a third-party role, where the person performs one or more parts of the contractual obligation between a main supplier and a recipient of the performance, without the person himself being in a legal relationship with the end customer. The wording of the Act and its draft do not contain a clear definition of the concepts that are central to the position of subcontractors, here in particular the concept of mediation. The practice of the Court of Justice of the European Union has thus, on the basis of the lack of definition of the term in the law, established statements of principle on the assessment subject. The objective of this thesis is then, to asses which possible limitations the two exemptions have for the Subcontractor from a legal scholarly perspective.

In relation to the position of subcontractors, there are two requirements set out by the Court which are particularly relevant. The first requirement concerns the legal relationship between the intermediary and the parties to the agreement, where in recent practice it has been derived from both provisions that the requirement is not as strict as previously. The second requirement is the nature of the benefit, which precludes the delivery of benefits of an administrative nature. In relation to the task's issue, whether when a subcontractor is covered by the Danish VAT Act § 13, subsection 1, nos. 10 and 11, it can be concluded that if the nature of the benefit is linked to the specific exempt service, the subcontractor will be covered by the provision as there is no requirement for a direct contractual relationship between the intermediary and the recipient of the benefit.