Jay Cooke

£5k seems a little steep, but you are paying for certainty, because the guidance in this specific area is not straightforward and one charity might get their pavilion zero rated whilst another may not, it all depends on the precise facts of each project. As trustees of the charity, you have a fiduciary duty to ensure the charity complies with the law at all times and does not expose itself to significant financial risks, such as finding out the supply was not zero rated and now needing to find another £50k. The issue will likely come to a head if the contractors get a VAT inspection and can't justify why they zero rated their sale to the charity, contractors will then raise a retrospective VAT invoice on the charity and then the lawyers get involved. Your question is like saying "I can file my own set of accounts to the charity commission, don't need an Accountant" there is no legal requirement to use a book-keeper or Accountant to prepare your records, but you do because you will know they are prepared correctly and indemnifies the Trustees if there are accounting errors identified in the future. HMRC guidance on sports pavilions and village halls here : https://www.gov.uk/guidance/buildings-and-construction-vat-notice-708#section14 Here are some links to Tax Tribunal cases involving sports pavilions : https://www.gov.uk/tax-and-chancery-tribunal-decisions/westow-cricket-club-v-the-commissioners-for-hm-revenue-and-customs-2021-ukut-0023-tcc This case involves a charity issuing a zero rating certificate and then later it was discovered that they should not have done so, and HMRC assessed the charity for a penalty of 100% of the VAT that was not charged originally. Whilst the tribunal waived the penalty, the case demonstrates that signing a statement to zero rate a new build is not without significant risk. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5d931a32ed915d55661e93b3/Eynsham_Cricket_Club_v_HMRC_.pdf https://www.gov.uk/tax-and-chancery-tribunal-decisions/westow-cricket-club-v-the-commissioners-for-hm-revenue-and-customs-2021-ukut-0023-tcc These two cases are more about the nuances of sports pavilions and zero rating. Finally, HMRC internal manuals discuss the nuances of village halls and how HMRC expect such buildings to be inclusive of the wider community and not just a single sport or activity. https://www.gov.uk/hmrc-internal-manuals/vat-construction/vconst16600 If you want certainty for free, you can write to HMRC under a non-statutory clearance https://www.gov.uk/guidance/non-statutory-clearance-service-guidance and setting out all of the details of the project, designs, intended use, income streams, costs and HMRC will provide their view. The HMRC Forum is not going to be able to answer this, HMRC can refer you to links to the guidance and legislation, HMRC can't give a yes/no answer as they'd need a load of details about the project before they can make a decision and it would need to be formally, in writing, hence the non-stat route may be suitable for you.

Amazon has started to charge local VAT to local marketplace sellers, if you have a UK company that is established in the UK, Amazon will charge 20% VAT (since August 2024), prior to that their fee was reverse charge. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx "Effective August 1, 2024, Selling on Amazon, Fulfilment by Amazon, and all other services currently supplied by Amazon Services Europe S.à r.l. (ASE) will be supplied by Amazon EU S.à r.l. (AEU). All agreements, policies, terms and conditions currently referring to ASE, including Amazon Payments agreements, will be updated to AEU. Additionally, all invoices issued by Amazon will be issued by AEU instead of ASE after August 1, 2024. If your company is established in the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, Poland, Belgium or Sweden, you will be invoiced by the AEU branch in your country of establishment. As a result, local VAT rules apply and and VAT will be charged on your Amazon fees. In the majority of cases, we expect that you will be able to recover this VAT through your normal VAT return process. We recommend that you contact your tax advisor for more information on recovering VAT as per your country of establishment's local regulations. If your company is not established in the countries listed above, you will be invoiced by the AEU head office in Luxembourg, and there will be no change to how VAT is applied on Amazon fees."

At the bottom of each web page on the HMRC website (and when in your government gateway), is an option "Something wrong with this webpage, click here", click on that and submit your issue, take screen shots if possible, then someone from IT will contact you by email with further instructions or to tell you the issue has been referred to another team. It might be quicker than writing into HMRC

HMRC are unlikely to give you any such confirmation, VAT is a self-assessed tax and the contractor should obtain their own advice. Sounds very much like the contractor doesn't understand the VAT rules around the empty house rules and is trying to simplify his life by asking you to obtain something that HMRC do not get involved with. If the contractor is so uncomfortable around these very basic rules of VAT, then it does question if they are a professional business which takes its tax compliance seriously. Similar thread here https://community.hmrc.gov.uk/customerforums/vat/d0451e9c-52d6-ee11-a81c-0022481aac05 "For the supplier to charge you 5% VAT on the restoration work then they only need to be satisfied that the house has been unoccupied for 2 years or more."

If HMRC have rejected two previous VAT registration applications, that is their error (if you are saying that the registration has been triggered by reverse charge purchase of services from overseas). If you forget the past and only register from say January 2025, then you only need to account for reverse charge from that date (January 2025), but suspect the issue will be when you file your first VAT return, that will be reviewed by HMRC and it will be at that point, when an Officer is physically checking the return, they will discover that your VAT registration date of January 2025 is not correct and that your correct VAT registration date was say January 2020 and so HMRC will then backdate the registration to 2020 and that will then capture all of the reverse charge VAT you failed to pay from 2020. That you had tried to register for VAT previously but been denied would help in terms of mitigation of penalties but your registration date is not fixed by any time limit, if you were meant to register for VAT in 2020 or 1995, then HMRC can backdate to that date and capture any reverse charge within that period. If the applications for VAT registration were rejected by HMRC twice, did you at any time seek to appeal HMRC's decision, because that would be the correct course of action, by appealing the rejection you'd have been able to explain in detail why you need to register for VAT. If you just submitted an application and accepted HMRC's rejection (twice), even though you knew HMRC to be wrong, then that isn't a good look, if you know what I mean. The reverse charge for overseas services rule is sort of an anti-avoidance rule, a business that cannot reclaim input tax might be persuaded to buy all of its services (webhosting, accountancy, legal, consultancy, etc) from overseas and thus avoid VAT, whereas if purchasing from a UK supplier, VAT would be incurred and therefore "sticks" with you, by buying from overseas (even if not on purpose but just because of how your business works and maybe has overseas subsidiaries with inter-company services, etc) then you gain an unfair advantage over other business like you who buy from UK suppliers and who incur VAT/increased cost of doing business as a result.

Your proposed transaction (Germany to Poland), presumably you also mean a UK entity will take the order from Polish customer and then UK entity places order with Germany supplier and asks German supplier t ship to Poland. In that scenario, the UK entity is making a supply in Germany and needs to register for VAT in Germany, the German supplier, if they are doing things correctly, will charge the UK company German VAT on the supply they (the German supplier) makes to the UK entity, In the alternative, the UK entity acquires the goods in Poland and would need to register for VAT in Poland and charge Polish VAT to the Polish customer. Prior to Brexit there was a simplification called "triangulation", https://www.gov.uk/hmrc-internal-manuals/vat-single-market/vatsm5235 but as UK no longer in the EU then you cannot use triangulation (except if the UK company is based in Northern Ireland as NI has a special relationship with the EU under the Windsor Agreement)

You reclaim the GBP VAT shown on the invoice on your UK VAT return as any other purchase invoice. As long as the invoice has a GBP equivalent showing the VAT, it does not matter what currency the invoice is in. Link below to HMRC guidance, the guidance is to be read by someone who is raising a foreign currency invoice. https://www.gov.uk/guidance/foreign-currency-transactions-vat-and-tour-operators

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/charity-fundraising-events-exemptions/fundraising-events-exemption-for-charities-and-other-qualifying-bodies Section 3 deals with event fundraising, but don't jump to that, read all of the document as it all has to be read in context. I think it is risky to base your charities financial compliance on hearsay/what another charity is doing. There is the risk the other charity are doing it wrong or the way they fundraise or are structured* is different to the way you fundraise/your own structure. *Structured as in the other charity might have a trading subsidiary, the board of Trustees may not be renumerated, etc. Are you comparing apples with pears. If you were never making taxable sales (or made what you thought were taxable sales but in fact they were not), then HMRC can cancel your VAT registration, you'll need to repay any input tax reclaimed and any VAT charged to customers will likely be left as it is, it'll be too complex to refund them potentially. Link here about when a VAT registration was made in error https://www.gov.uk/hmrc-internal-manuals/vat-registration-manual/vatreg31100 The first hurdle will be ensuring your events are indeed exempt - the above link will explain the rules - and then once established that is the case, writing to HMRC to set out the situation and explaining the error of VAT registration and then HMRC will reply with their view and what to do if they accept your deregistration request or else why HMRC cannot accept your deregistration. If you've an Accountant who prepares your year-end and Charities Commission filings, then might be worth asking them for assistance.

There are two tests for VAT registrations, a 12 month "backwards look" test and a 30 day "forward look test". The backwards look test is familiar to most people, you look back on a rolling 12 month basis (so November 2024 to November 2023) and if turnover is over £90k then you are required to register for VAT. The forward look test is less known, but it looks at whether you turned over or planned to turnover more than £90k in the month ahead (the next 30 days), it may be that you knew at the end of September that you would launch a new software and expected sales over £90k in October alone. With the forward look test there is no exception from registration and this may be where you may have a problem. With the backward look test, whether it is a waste of everyone times or not, the law states once you breach the threshold, you must register for VAT (compulsory registration), if you want to request exception from registration because you've only gone over the threshold by a bit, you still have to go through the motions of registering for VAT else if you did not do this then it might look to HMRC that you knew you went over but ignored your legal requirement to register or ask exception and that isn't a good look. If you've gone over the £90k threshold (either because of the backward or forward tests or both), you still have to register for VAT but during the (online) registration process there is a box to tick that says you want to request exception from registration, your application is then processed by HMRC as a normal VAT registration and at HMRC's discretion, they may or may not grant you exception from registration. If HMRC do not grant you exception, then you are VAT registered and you file Nil VAT returns for each quarter until you start making sales again in November 2025. When you file your annual personal tax/corporate tax returns, HMRC will know you've gone over the VAT threshold as they'll see your income levels, HMRC can easily identify traders who have gone over the threshold and not registered for VAT. Forward look test. https://www.gov.uk/hmrc-internal-manuals/vat-registration-manual/vatreg18200 Backward look test. https://www.gov.uk/hmrc-internal-manuals/vat-registration-manual/vatreg18100

The gateway you are using is for your business and you can only have one VAT number attached to your gateway. You'll need to contact the VAT IT Helpdesk (link below) and ask them to remove/unlink your old VAT number and that will then allow you to add your new VAT number. https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/hm-revenue-customs/contact/vat-online-services-helpdesk