Making Tax Digital (MTD) for VAT is to be extended to cover businesses with a turnover below the VAT threshold from April 2022. The MTD for VAT regime started in April 2019 when businesses with a turnover above the VAT threshold of £85,000 became mandated to keep their records digitally and provide their VAT return information to HMRC using MTD compatible software.

The extension of MTD from April 2022 will apply to all VAT registered businesses with turnover below the VAT threshold of £85,000. This change was first announced in July 2020 and about a third of businesses mandated to sign-up from April 2022 have already voluntarily chosen to use MTD.

If you are affected and have not yet signed up, we would urge you to start the process as soon as possible.

To sign up to MTD for VAT, businesses, or their agent need to:

1. Visit GOV.UK and choose Making Tax Digital-compatible software. For many businesses, the software they are using should already be compatible with MTD.
2. Keep digital records starting from 1 April 2022 or the beginning of their VAT period
3. Sign up and submit their VAT Return through Making Tax Digital

A small number of VAT-registered businesses may be eligible for an exemption from MTD, if it is not reasonable or practicable for them to use digital tools for their tax. If a business has previously been granted an exemption for VAT online filing, this will carry over to MTD VAT requirements.

Since 1 January 2021, businesses registered for VAT have been able to account for import VAT on their VAT return, often referred to as postponed VAT accounting. For most businesses, this means that they can declare and recover import VAT on the same VAT return. The normal VAT recovery rules regarding any VAT that can be reclaimed apply. 

This applies to all customs declarations that require businesses to account for import VAT, including supplementary declarations, except when HMRC have notified a business otherwise. 

These rules save businesses from having to pay import VAT (at the port of entry) and to recover at a later date. This offers cashflow benefits for affected businesses. HMRC has confirmed that the postponed VAT accounting rules are to remain in place permanently.

Businesses are able to account for import VAT on imports into Great Britain (England, Scotland and Wales) from anywhere outside the UK. Businesses in Northern Ireland can use the postponed VAT accounting for goods imported from outside the UK and EU. The VAT rules for the movement of goods between Northern Ireland and the EU have not changed and remain subject to the Northern Ireland Protocol.

VAT registered businesses do not need any specific approval from HMRC in order to account for import VAT on their VAT return.

There are special VAT rules that allow two or more corporate bodies to be treated as a single taxable person for VAT purposes. This is known as a VAT group. Eligible persons are bodies corporate, individuals, partnerships and Scottish partnerships, provided certain conditions are satisfied. Bodies corporate includes companies of all types and limited liability partnerships.

Under a VAT group registration, the representative member accounts for any tax due on supplies made by the group to third parties outside the group. This is particularly helpful for those whose accounting is centralised. As a VAT group is treated as a single taxable person, they do not normally account for VAT on goods or services supplied between group members. Only one VAT return is required for the whole group and all members of the group are jointly and severally liable for the tax due from the representative member.

There are other important points to be aware of in respect of a VAT group registration. For example, the representative member must have all the necessary information to submit a VAT return for the group by the due date. The partial exemption de minimis limits apply to the group as a whole and not the members individually.

The VAT liability of the supply of driving lessons is an interesting issue that can be of relevance to other supply scenarios such as hairdressers and other workers in the beauty industry. 

In HMRC’s internal manuals the guidance identifies three possible scenarios that can apply to someone providing driving lessons to the public:

• The driving school employs its own instructors under contracts of service. HMRC comments that this method is probably only used in a minority of cases. When this is the case, the driving school is supplying the tuition to its pupils and must account for output tax on the full value of fees received. The driving school is making the supply of tuition to its customers and there is no supply by the individual instructors, who are simply receiving remuneration (wages) for their services as employees. 
• The instructors supply their services to the school under a contract of services. They need only account for output tax on these supplies if the value exceeds the registration limits. The school must account for output tax on the full value of the fees received from pupils.
• Each individual instructor supplies tuition services directly to their pupils using the driving school as an agent. Output tax is only due on the value of those supplies if an instructor exceeds the registration limits. However, payment made by each instructor to the school is consideration for a supply of agency services by the school, and the school must declare output tax accordingly. 

The transfer of a business as a going concern (TOGC) rules cover the VAT liability on the sale of a business. Normally the sale of the assets of a VAT registered or VAT registerable business will be subject to VAT at the appropriate rate.

Where the sale of a business includes assets and meets certain conditions, the sale will be categorised as a TOGC. A TOGC is defined as 'neither a supply of goods nor a supply of services' and is therefore outside the scope of VAT. Under the TOGC rules no VAT would be chargeable on a qualifying sale.

All the following conditions are necessary for the TOGC rules to apply:

• The assets must be sold as part of a 'business' as a 'going concern'. In essence, the business must be operating as such and not just an 'inert aggregation of assets'.
• The purchaser intends to use the assets to carry on the same kind of business as the seller.
• Where the seller is a taxable person, the purchaser must be a taxable person already or become one as the result of the transfer.
• Where only part of a business is sold it must be capable of separate operation.
• There must not be a series of immediately consecutive transfers.
• There are further conditions in relation to transactions involving land.

The TOGC rules can be complex, and both the vendor and purchaser of a business must ensure that the rules are properly followed. The TOGC rules are also mandatory which means that it is imperative to establish from the outset whether a sale is or is not a TOGC. For example, if VAT is charged in error, the buyer has no legal right to recover it from HMRC and would have to seek to recover this 'VAT' from the seller.