Kindness of strangers

We act for an unincorporated charity which is registered with the UK Charity Commissioners.

Although the majority of the trustees’ meetings are held in the United Kingdom the entire activities of the charity are carried out abroad outside the European Union.

We receive the accounts from the treasurer in the UK but then travel to the country of operation to carry out all of the audit work. When the audit is completed we submit our invoice to the UK treasurer and this is paid from the UK.

The charity has no office or facility in the UK at all.

The question that we have is whether we should charge VAT on the invoice and would it make any difference if we sent our invoice to the centre of operations outside the European Union and had it paid from there.

Taxation readers’ thoughts would be most appreciated.