In a letter to the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC), Treasury minister Danny Alexander has warned NHS Trusts against using artificial arrangements designed to avoid paying VAT on locum staff charges. This follows news reports about schemes used by a number of NHS Trusts, which involve the hire of locum doctors and other staff on [...]
The VAT treatment of locum medical staff has also been recently examined in the case of Rapid Sequence Ltd v. HMRC, which was heard before the First-tier Tax Tribunal (FTT). Rapid Sequence Ltd (the Company) was an employment business supplying locum doctors to NHS Trusts as a principal. The locum doctors operated either as self-employed [...]
HMRC has released updated guidance about changes to the VAT treatment of self-storage services, which came in to effect last year. Under the previous rules, the provision of a clearly defined space for the self-storage of goods was VAT-exempt (as a supply of land), unless the self-storage operator had ‘opted to tax’ the land/building for [...]
HMRC are continuing a programme of ‘aspect checks’ on NHS Trusts, whereby a visit is arranged to review a specific area of VAT compliance. One of the areas being checked is whether NHS Trusts are applying the correct VAT treatment to purchases of non-UK goods and services. Many of these goods and services are subject [...]
The Department of Health has recently released an updated guidance note for PCT and SHA legacy teams about closedown arrangements for VAT. The note advises that a final VAT return should be submitted for transactions processed in the period from 1st July to 31st August 2013. Organisations that have already deregistered can still claim input [...]
As discussed in our July 2013 newsletter, the VAT exemption for business supplies of research between NHS organisations and other ‘eligible bodies’ (such as universities and charities) is withdrawn with effect from 1st August 2013. HMRC has now published detailed guidance about this withdrawal, which states that the VAT exemption is no longer available for [...]
The High Court has released its judgment in a recent case brought by GSTS Pathology LLP and others, against HMRC’s decision to change the VAT treatment of out-sourced pathology services. GSTS is a public-private joint venture between Serco Ltd and two NHS Trusts, which was established to supply out-sourced pathology services to the NHS. HMRC [...]
Following the judgment of the House of Lords in the joined cases of Fleming/Condé Nast in 2008, many NHS Trusts submitted VAT claims to HMRC for input VAT which had been under-recovered, or output VAT which had been over-declared, in prior accounting periods. Some types of claim have been accepted by HMRC, such as those [...]
NHS organisations should also be aware that the VAT exemption for business supplies of research to other ‘eligible bodies’ (such as universities and charities) will be withdrawn from 1st August 2013. The decision follows a notification from the European Commission that the exemption does not comply with European law. Currently, business supplies of research between [...]
HMRC has just released revised guidance on COS heading 37, which supersedes guidance that it had previously issued to NHS organisations in May 2012. This previous guidance stated that VAT could only be recovered on the supply of maintenance services for leased equipment if this maintenance was provided by a separate supplier to the one [...]