On Thu, 10 Feb 2011 11:48:05 +0000, John Kenyon
wrote:

On 10/02/2011 08:59, Bruce wrote:
Charles Ellson wrote:

I didn't mention charging by the maintenance company, the only
admitted service involved in my scenario is that of the clampers
supplying the maintenance company. A liability to be charged VAT can
arise from receiving goods or services (in this case, keeping the car
park clear of unwanted vehicles) even if you don't pay for them if
HMRC regard the recipient of those services as paying in kind
(allowing the clampers to operate on their land) for something which
is not a gift, see e.g. 3.7 in
http://customs.hmrc.gov.uk/channelsP... Type=document
[http://tinyurl.com/5v69gy4]
It does not matter whether the recipient of the services is registered
for VAT or not as the VAT has to be collected and accounted for by the
supplier of the services or goods.



The problem here is that some people don't understand how VAT works.

Some aren't even aware that they don't understand. The result is
discussions like this with pointless, circular arguments. The sole
reason is that some people are not prepared to make the effort to find
out how VAT works before they post. Instead, they prefer repeatedly
posting nonsense about why it doesn't work. All that does is
demonstrate that they know nothing (or less than nothing, because what
they think they know is in fact wrong) about the subject.

As ever, Charles, I admire the patience you are able to show while
beating your head against a very thick and immovable brick wall. ;-)



If your level of expertise is such that you can identify a lack of
knowledge, whey don't you set us all straight then?

This seems to hark back to a discussion about contracts some time ago
which involved 99 different opinions about who was supplying, who was
being supplied and what the "consideration" (in everyday terms, the
payment) was. The common element seems to be that the
argument/discussion involves services; if goods were involved then it
is generally easy to identify who is supplying and who is receiving
the supply but where services are involved (especially if both parties
are consumers or both in business) it can get a bit complicated when
trying to work out who is doing the supplying/receiving especially if
such things as who first made what kind of offer to the other is not
precisely known. At least in this case only one of the parties seems
to be VAT-registered otherwise HMRC would probably be seeking some way
of having two bites at the same cherry.