JTC celebrates VAT victory
I am delighted to report that the JTC has had a major success this month in the field of VAT.
In the spring we were shown a draft of a revised form of the public guidance notes which cover the VAT treatment of Building and Construction - Notice 708 -and given the opportunity to offer pre publication comments.
I issued the notes to a team of volunteers and a beady eyed reviewer noticed that HMRC were proposing a major change to the date on which firms paying interim payments could recover the VAT.
Not only did HMRC propose to delay recovery of VAT, their changed procedure would have involved anyone with a computerized payment system in manual interventions for each and every recovery of VAT.
The JTC wrote to HMRC asking for a meeting and put a forward a case for the status quo. Initially HMRC seemed determined to press ahead… but faced with the prospect of a vociferous team from UKCG, CECA and NASC – all of which had members affected by the changes proposed-HMRC have backed down.
We have faced them down and the old wording of Notice 708 will stay in place.
Liz Bridge
2nd Aug 2011
ID: 1405
