News - tax cases

Whose victory?

The European Court of Justice has ruled in three UK VAT cases Halifax University of Huddersfield and BUPA. In Halifax and University of Huddersfield both establishments wanted to carry out building work. However as most of their services were exempt from VAT they would not have been able to reclaim much of the VAT on that work. They therefore devised schemes involving different entities to allow them to recover the input VAT.
BUPA in order to be able to deduct the input VAT on purchases of goods from suppliers before the legislation was changed put in place prepayment arrangements with those companies so that they could claim the VAT on invoices paid although the goods were not yet delivered.
In each case Customs refused the taxpayers' claims saying that a transaction carried out with the...