Readers’ forum: Construction skills

I act for a property company based in the Channel Islands which is building a new office block in the UK. The company is VAT registered in the UK and has opted to tax the site which will be rented out on completion. One of our suppliers provides training assessments and programmes to building workers who are employed by the company and working on this project.

The supplier has charged 20% VAT on its services which we disputed on the basis that it is a non-land service for a non-UK business and therefore covered by the general business-to-business (B2B) rule; in other words it is outside the scope of UK VAT. The director of the supplier has refused to give a VAT credit because HMRC’s VAT helpline service told him that the VAT depended on the place of supply of the services so the...