Monthly Archives: June 2018

New RCB 5 – VAT treatment of goods supplied on approval

By   25 June 2018
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Goods supplied on approval

Meaning

Goods supplied on approval is an arrangement under which items of durable nature are provided to a prospective customer for a pre-purchase trial. These items are returnable after a specified period in re-saleable condition if not accepted for purchase.

New publication

HMRC has announced via Revenue and Customs Brief 5 (2018) “RCB 5” changes to the way goods supplied on approval are treated for VAT purposes.

The broad thrust of RCB 5 is that, in HMRC’s opinion, taxpayers are using the rules for goods supplied on approval when this treatment is inappropriate.

The goods supplied on approval rules

Output tax is due at the end of the approval period. That is, tax is deferred until a time the goods are adopted (if they are). These rules are distinct from a supply of goods with a subsequent right to return them. In these cases the tax point is when title passes.

Sale on approval was considered by the Tribunal in the case of Littlewoods Organisation plc (VTD 14977). The Tribunal held that goods were supplied on approval where there is no contract of sale unless, and until, the recipient concerned adopted or was deemed to have adopted the goods. The judge in that case decided that Littlewoods did not supply goods on approval. This case appears to have triggered an HMRC initiative to look at the number of businesses which may be incorrectly deferring output tax by using these rules. It concluded that a lot fewer taxpayers were actually providing goods on approval than previously thought.

Technical

The basic tax point for a supply of goods in these situations is determined by the VAT Act 1994 section 6(2) (c) which applies in the case of goods on approval. It delays the basic tax point until the time when the goods are adopted by the customer or twelve months from the date they were originally despatched, whichever is the earlier

Section 6(2)

(2) … a supply of goods shall be treated as taking place –

(a) if the goods are to be removed, at the time of the removal;

(b) … ;

(c) if the goods (being sent or taken on approval or sale or return or similar terms) are removed before it is known whether a supply will take place, at the time it becomes certain that the supply has taken place or, if sooner, 12 months after the removal.

The guidance

HMRC has published the RCB to provide guidance on how businesses should review their transactions in order to establish whether they are using sale on approval treatment correctly.

Indicators of goods supplied on approval

Whether or not goods are supplied on approval will depend on the facts in each case and will require consideration of a number of indicators which will have to be carefully weighed against each other.  Relevant indicators include the following factors but they are not exhaustive.

  • The terms and conditions of trading, and all contractual terms applying.
  • The time when title in the goods passes to the buyer.
  • The time at which the buyer has the right to dispose of the goods as owner.
  • The view presented to the customer in marketing literature, order forms, delivery notes, statements etc.
  • The rights of the customer to return unwanted goods.
  • The terms of any supply of credit finance provided with the goods.
  • The time when payment for the goods is demanded.
  • The time when payment for the goods is received.
  • The time when the buyer assumes responsibility for the upkeep and insurance of the goods.
  • Anything the buyer does to signify his adoption of the goods.
  • The calculation of the minimum payment due for goods delivered.
  • The time when a sale is recognised in the financial accounts of the business.

(these indicators are not featured in RCB 5).

Deadline

HMRC state that from 18 September 2018 all business must change their accounting systems and accurately apply the appropriate VAT treatment. However, no action will be taken for past inaccuracies and taxpayers will not be required to make any changes to records or declarations.

Delivery charges

In normal circumstances, the fee charged for delivery follows the VAT liability of the goods being supplied (it is a single supply of delivered goods). However, the RCB somewhat controversially, states that when goods are supplied on approval the delivery charge is not ancillary. HMRC conclude that as delivery occurs before the customer or the supplier know whether there will be a supply of goods, delivery is an aim in itself, represents a separate, independent supply and is not dependent upon the supply of goods. The purpose of the delivery service is to facilitate the customer inspecting the goods to decide whether or not they wish to purchase them. This is always a standard rated supply and consequently, output tax is due on this fee, whether or not the goods are adopted (and with a tax point prior to adoption or return). I expect that this analysis will be challenged at some point as it does not, in my mind, sit comfortably with previously decided case law.

Action 

Businesses which consider themselves to be supplying goods on approval (usually mail order businesses) need to review their terms and manner of trading to identify whether that is indeed the case. Consideration must be given to the above indicators, the ruling in the Littlewoods case and the information in RCB 5. If what is being provided falls outside the definition of a supply on approval, the necessary changes are required in order to recognise a sale at an earlier time. Even if goods are supplied on approval, the VAT treatment of delivery charges need to be reconsidered and adjusted if need be. We can assist if required.

The VAT gap rises

By   20 June 2018
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In the latest figures released by HMRC the amount of unpaid tax has increased by circa £1 billion.

What is the tax gap?

The VAT gap is the difference between the amount of VAT that should, in theory, be collected by HMRC, against what is actually collected. The ‘VAT total theoretical liability’ (VTTL) represents the VAT that should be paid if all businesses complied with both the letter of the law and HMRC’s interpretation of the intention of Parliament in setting law, referred to as the spirit of the law below.

Summary

Here is an overview of the figures which are for the year 2016-17:

The VAT gap is estimated to be £11.7 billion in which equates to 8.9% of net VAT total theoretical liability. HMRC report that there has been a long-term reduction between 2005-06 and 2016-17 for the VAT gap (12.5% to 8.9%). The information is provided by The Office for National Statistics, National Accounts Blue Book 2017 and Consumer Trend.

MTIC

The Missing Trader Intra-Community (MTIC) fraud estimate reduced to less than £0.5 billion in 2016-17, from between £0.5 billion and £1 billion in 2015-16.. VAT debt has been fairly stable since 2011-12. It is estimated at £1.5 billion in 2016-17. Around 70% of the VAT total theoretical liability in 2016-17 was from household consumption. The remaining gap was from consumption by businesses making exempt supplies and from the government and housing sectors. Around half of household VAT-able expenditure was from restaurants and hotels, transport and recreation and culture.

VAT debt

The contribution of debt to the VAT gap is defined as the amount of VAT declared by businesses but not paid to HMRC. The VAT gap showed a peak at 12.6% in 2008-09, which was partly because the recession caused an increase in VAT debt from £0.9 billion in 2007-08 to £2.4 billion in 2008-09. VAT debt has been fairly stable since 2011-12. It is estimated at £1.5 billion in 2016-17.

Avoidance

VAT avoidance is another component of the VAT gap. HMRC say that avoidance is artificial transactions that serve little or no purpose other than to produce a tax advantage. It involves operating within the letter, but not the spirit, of the law. VAT avoidance is estimated at £0.1 billion in 2016-17.

Other indirect taxes

The overall excise tax gap is estimated to be £4.1 billion (£3.1 billion in excise duty and £1 billion in VAT). This is analysed as:

  • £2.5 billion tobacco tax gap, with associated losses in tobacco duty (£1.9 billion) and VAT (£0.5 billion )
  • £1.3 billion alcohol tax gap, with associated losses in alcohol duty (£0.9 billion) and VAT (£0.4 billion)
  • £150 in GB diesel duty and associated VAT
  • £40 in Northern Ireland (NI) diesel duty and associated VAT
  • £170 in other excise duties

Overall tax gap

The report indicates that small businesses were most likely to be underpaying tax generally. They accounted for £13.7 billion of last the overall tax gap. Large businesses had underpaid £7 billion and medium-sized businesses £3.9 billion.

The tax gap for Income Tax, National Insurance and Capital Gains Tax was 4.2%.  Along with VAT there has been a long-term downward trend in the Corporation Tax gap. This has reduced from 12.4% in 2005/06 to 7.4% last year.

It appears that the days of large tax avoidance schemes have passed and HMRC is now concentrating on compliance mistakes and routine errors.  HMRC is also increasingly challenging legal interpretations of tax law in order to recover more tax. Please see here for further details on HMRC’s approach.

What causes the tax gap?

The behaviour giving rise to the gap are as follows:

  • £5.9 billion – failure to take reasonable care
  • £5.4 billion – criminal attacks
  • £5.3 billion – legal interpretation
  • £5.3 billion – evasion
  • £3.4 billion – non-payment
  • £3.2 billion – error
  • £3.2 billion – hidden economy
  • £1.7 billion – avoidance

VAT: Construction industry – the new Reverse Charge

By   11 June 2018
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Builders will soon be required to charge themselves VAT.

HMRC has published an important new draft Statutory Instrument (SI) for technical consultation with a draft explanatory memorandum and draft tax information and impact note. The new rules are likely to be introduced in the autumn.

This sets out more details of the intended Reverse Charge (RC) for construction services. The draft legislation will make supplies of standard or reduced rated construction services between construction or businesses subject to the domestic RC, which means that the recipient of the supply will be liable to account for VAT due, instead of the supplier.

What supplies does the intended legislation cover?

The RC will apply to, inter alia:

  • construction, alteration, repair, extension, demolition or dismantling of buildings or structures
  • work on; walls, roadworks, electronic communications apparatus, docks and harbours, railways, pipe-lines, reservoirs, water-mains, wells, sewers, or industrial plant
  • installation in any building or structure of systems of heating, lighting, air-conditioning, ventilation, power supply, drainage, sanitation, water supply or fire protection
  • internal cleaning of buildings and structures, so far as carried out in the course of their construction, alteration, repair, extension or restoration
  • painting or decorating the internal or external surfaces of any building or structure
  • services which form an integral part of the services described above, including site clearance, earthmoving, excavation, tunnelling and boring, laying of foundations, erection of scaffolding, site restoration, landscaping and the provision of roadways and other access works.

What is not covered?

These are some supplies which are not covered by the draft SI

  • drilling for, or extraction of, oil or natural gas
  • extraction of minerals and tunnelling or boring, or construction of underground works, for this purpose
  • manufacture of building or engineering components or equipment, materials, plant or machinery, or delivery of any of these things to site
  • manufacture of components for systems of heating, lighting, air-conditioning, ventilation, power supply, drainage, sanitation, water supply or fire protection, or delivery of any of these things to site
  • the professional work of architects or surveyors, or of consultants in building, engineering, interior or exterior decoration or in the laying-out of landscape
  • signwriting and erecting, installing and repairing signboards and advertisements
  • the installation of seating, blinds and shutters or the installation of security.

Please note that neither of the lists above are exhaustive.

Further details

The rules do not apply to supplies to the end user (consumer) eg; retailers and landlords, but rather to other construction businesses which then use them to make a further supply. There are no de minimis limits, but the RC will not apply to associated businesses.

Deadline

Before these new rues come into effect, HMRC have asked for comments before 20 July 2018.

Why the new rules?

Briefly, the SI is intended to avoid Missing Trader Fraud (MTF). The rules avoids suppliers charging and being paid VAT, but failing to declare or pay this over to the government. HMRC has identified the building trade as an area where there has been considerable tax leakage in the past.

Technical

As a general rule, it is the supplier of goods or services who is required to account for VAT on those supplies. However, the VAT Act 1994, section 55A requires the recipient, not the supplier, to account for and pay tax on the supply of any goods and services which are of a description specified in an order made by the Treasury for that purpose.

Action

It is prudent to check whether you, or your clients’ businesses will be affected by the intended SI. If so, plans need to be put in place; whether as a supplier or recipient, to ensure that VAT is not charged incorrectly (supplier) and the RC is applied correctly (recipient). It is likely that output tax incorrectly shown on an invoice will be due to HMRC, but will not be recoverable by the recipient and the omission of levying the RC will lead to penalties.

Please contact us if you have any queries or require further information.

VAT – Bringing goods into the UK from other EU countries

By   8 June 2018
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VAT Reverse Charge for Goods – Acquisition Tax and Intrastat

If a business registered for VAT in the UK receives goods from other Member States in the EU (technically known as acquisitions rather than imports) it will not pay overseas VAT in the Member State from which they are purchased. However, a “Reverse Charge” applies to such purchases  The rate of VAT payable is the same rate that you would have paid had the goods been supplied to the purchasing business by a UK supplier. This VAT is known as acquisition tax and a business can normally reclaim this VAT if the acquisitions relate to taxable supplies it makes. This is usually resale of the goods, but in some circumstances the goods will be “consumed” by a business. In these cases, if the business is partly exempt, there may be a restriction of the amount of acquisition tax claimable.

VAT free

In order to obtain intra-EU goods VAT free a business must give its supplier its UK VAT number. The supplier is obliged to make checks to determine whether the number is valid and if it is it allows the supplier to treat the supply as VAT free. VAT number validity may be checked here

Why?

This system ensures that tax is paid (and paid in the “correct” Member State) and also avoids “rate shopping” where a business which cannot recover input tax could, without these rules, buy goods VAT free to the detriment of suppliers in its own country. With acquisition tax, it is a level playing field for all EU businesses.

Record-keeping for acquisition tax

A business must enter the VAT details on its VAT return. The time of supply for VAT purposes is the time of acquisition – normally, the earlier of:

  • the 15th day of the month following the one in which the goods come into the UK
  • the date the supplier issued their invoice

A business must account for the acquisition tax on the return for the period in which the time of supply occurs, and may treat this as input tax on the same return. This, for most businesses is a bookkeeping exercise and is far preferable than the previous system when goods had to be physically entered at borders. This issue forms part of the problems for Brexit, especially with the UK’s only land border between Northern Ireland and the ROI.

Value of acquired goods for VAT purposes

The value for VAT of any goods brought into the UK is the same as the value for VAT of the goods had they been supplied to the purchaser by a UK supplier. A business must account for the value of the goods or services in £sterling, so it must convert their value into £sterling if the goods were priced in another currency.

Intrastat

Intrastat is the name given to the system for collecting statistics on the trade in goods between EU Member States. The requirements of Intrastat are similar in all EU Member States.

It is worth noting that:

  • the supply of services is excluded from Intrastat
  • only movements which represent physical trade in goods are covered by Intrastat, although there are some movements that are excluded

Intrastat – use of information

The information collected by the Intrastat system is a key component for Balance of Payments (BOP) and National Accounts (NA) data, which is regarded as an important economic indicator of the UK’s performance.

The Office for National Statistics uses the monthly trade in goods figures collected by HMRC together with the trade in services survey to produce the BOP and NA figures.

The Bank of England uses monthly trade data as part of its key indicators for gauging the state of the UK and world economic environment to set interest rates each month.

Government departments use the statistics to help set overall trade policy and generate initiatives on new trade areas.

Beyond the UK, trade statistics data are used by the EU to set trade policy and inform decisions made by such institutions as the European Central Bank, the United Nations and the International Monetary Fund.

The commercial world uses statistics to assess markets both within the UK (for example, to assess import opportunities) and externally (for example, to establish new markets for its goods).

Intrastat – the practicalities

All VAT registered businesses acquiring goods must complete two boxes (8 and 9) on its VAT return showing the total value of any goods acquired from VAT registered suppliers in other EU Member States (known as arrivals). In addition, larger VAT registered businesses must supply further information each month on their trade in goods with other EU Member States. This is known as an Intranet Supplementary Declaration (SD) …which is a subject for another day. For arrivals, the current threshold is £1.5 million and this limit is reviewed annually.

How this system will work (if at all) after Brexit remains to be seen, but given past experiences I am not optimistic.

VAT: Wakefield College – Court of Appeal case

By   1 June 2018
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Latest from the courts

Further to my article on the Wakefield College case here the Court of Appeal (CA) has dismissed the college’s appeal that certain of its activities were non-business.

Background 

The detailed background was set out in the above linked article, but to recap: In order for certain building works supplied to the appellant to be zero rated the resultant building has to be used for a “relevant charitable purpose” – that is; not for business purposes. This is the case even if there is a small amount of business activity in the building (as long as these can be shown to be insignificant; which is taken to be less than 5% of the activities in the whole building).

The issue

The issue here was whether the education provided by the college could be deemed non-business because, although the majority was grant funded, students were also required to make a contribution to their education. This is dependent upon whether the provision of courses by the college to students paying subsidised fees was, an economic activity carried on by it for the purposes of article 9 of the VAT Directive and consequently, a “business” within Note (6)  of Group 5 in Schedule 8 to the VAT Act 1994.

The 1994 Act provides, at group 5 of schedule 8, for the zero-rating of various supplies made in the course of construction of certain buildings including:

“The supply in the course of construction of

(a) a building … intended solely for use for … a relevant charitable purpose…

of any services related to the construction other than the services of an architect, surveyor or any person acting as a consultant or in a supervisory capacity”.

Note (6) to group 5 provides:

“Use for a relevant charitable purpose means use by a charity… –

(a) otherwise than in the course or furtherance of a business.”

Decision

The CA found that the fact that the students paid for education (an exempt supply) meant that it was a business activity as consideration flowed in both directions. The proportion of the costs paid by the student amounted to between 25% and 30% of the total cost and could therefore not be deemed insignificant.

Commentary

It is worth reconsidering comments made by the judge in his summing up in the Upper Tribunal hearing.

 “We cannot leave this appeal without expressing some disquiet that it should have reached us at all. It is common ground that the College is a charity, and that the bulk of its income is derived from public funds. Because that public funding does not cover all of its costs it is compelled to seek income from other sources; but its doing so does not alter the fact that it remains a charity providing education for young people. If, by careful management or good fortune, it can earn its further income in one way rather than another, or can keep the extent of the income earned in particular ways below an arbitrary threshold, it can escape a tax burden on the construction of a building intended for its charitable purpose, but if it is unable to do so, even to a trivial extent, it is compelled to suffer not some but all of that tax burden. We think it unlikely that Parliament intended such a capricious system. We consider it unlikely, too, that Parliament would consider it a sensible use of public money for the parties to litigate this dispute twice before the FTT and now twice before this tribunal. We do not blame the parties; the College is obliged to maximise the resources available to it for the pursuit of its charitable activities, just as HMRC are obliged to collect tax which is due. Rather, we think the legislation should be reconsidered. It cannot be impossible to relieve 16 charities of an unintended tax burden while at the same time protecting commercial organisations from unfair competition and preventing abuse”.

So, although the result may be seen as “unfair” on the college, the strict letter of the VAT legislation does not provide the courts with any alternative but to impose a VAT charge on the construction works – a charge which the college will have to bear as it is unable to recover it as input tax due to the partial exemption rules.

This illustrates the complexity with both the concept of business/non-business and property and construction issues. When the two technical areas collide, as in this case, matters can get very complicated and proper advice is vital. This is especially important with charities as they benefit from very few VAT reliefs and it is important to ensure that those available are correctly taken advantage of.