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Capital goods: why their input VAT is treated separately

Machinery, equipment and installations have their own article in the law. And their own box on the return. This is what changes compared with an ordinary purchase.

6 min readTicuenta
In one sentence: if you carry out exclusively operations with the right to credit, the VAT on a capital good used in your activity gives credit in the month of acquisition. If you also have operations without the right, that credit is adjusted.

What the law says

When the taxpayer carries out, or foresees carrying out, exclusively operations with the right to input credit, on the acquisition of capital goods used in the activity, the tax paid shall give the right to input credit in the month of its acquisition.

Law 6826, Value Added Tax Act · article 25

There are three conditions packed into that sentence, and all three matter:

  • “Exclusively” — if you have both kinds of operation, this is not your case.
  • “Used in the activity” — the asset has to be destined to what you actually do.
  • “In the month of its acquisition” — it is not spread across the asset's useful life.
“Or foresees carrying out” is not decoration. The law contemplates the taxpayer who is going to carry out those operations — the typical case of someone buying machinery before starting to sell. It is a forecast you have to be able to sustain afterwards.

If you have operations with and without the right

Then the credit is adjusted in the manner the regulation determines. It is the same logic as the proportion applied to other non-identifiable purchases, but with its own treatment because the asset lasts years and the proportion changes.

Its own box on the return

This is the practical part. Since form 150 splits VAT by rate, and within each rate between goods, services and capital goods, a machine bought in March does not go in the same box as the month's supplies. How the return is organised.

Which means the classification has to exist in your accounts, not be reconstructed at filing time. An asset recorded as an ordinary purchase produces a return that does not match the documents behind it.

If you rent out property

Your activity is fully taxable, so a capital good used in it — furniture, appliances, an air conditioning unit for the house you let — gives full credit in the month you buy it. Worth claiming, and easy to forget in a year when you furnish a property.

From Ticuenta

Classified from the purchase, not from the return

A capital good recorded as one goes into its own box, and the month's figures come out the shape form 150 expects.

See how it works

About this article. The quotation is article 25 of the VAT Act; the adjustment when there are operations of both kinds is provided by the same article and developed in the regulation.

Verified as of 24 September 2026. Tax rules change. This is information, not tax advice.

Sources: Current legal texts (Sinalevi) Ministry of Finance

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