Under Art. 27 of the Sixth Directive, Member States may be authorized to introduce special measures for derogation from the provisions of the Directive. The special measures must simplify the procedure for charging the tax or prevent certain types of tax evasion or avoidance. Under the ECJ judgment in Walter Sudholz, special measures generally do not have retrospective effect. In this article, the author shows that recent authorizations have not always been adopted in a timely manner, which may leave the taxable persons involved the option to, temporarily, ignore them.