"Charles Ellson" wrote in message

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.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if no-one was VAT-registered in this
case, and the "VAT" collected from the flat owners stayed in the
clamper's pocket.