Friday, February 08, 2013

Canal and River Trust

I was with some friends last night and one of them pointed out that a Trust, such as CRT, cannot charge VAT as they do not pay VAT.  I had a look at the licence fee this morning here and if you scroll to the bottom it says:

“Licences begin on the first day of the month. Prices include VAT at 20%.”

What is that about then?!

I emailed them to ask them and here is their reply.

 

“..Thank you for your email. We are still able to charge VAT and whilst we are now a charity, generally there has been no significant change to the VAT status of our supplies of goods and services. The reasons for charging VAT on boat licences and moorings in particular also remain the same.
Kind regards..”

7 Comments:

Blogger Bruce in Sanity said...

Your friend is wrong. Commercial services provided by a charity are still liable for VAT, which the charity has to collect and pay over to HMRC in the usual way.

There was a discussion about exactly this point over on CWDF sometime last year.

Cheers

Bruce

11:28 AM  
Blogger MortimerBones said...

I couldn't find a thread on CWDF but I will go and have another look!

We thought it was curious that CRT are a trust charging VAT when it seemed they don't pay VAT and he said he was going to look into it. Now we know!

I was impressed with how quickly CRT responded when I asked them about it.

Thanks!

11:36 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

You can find out about charities & VAT on the HMRC website. Sadly most charities are not exempt.

Marty S

12:03 PM  
Blogger MortimerBones said...

Thank you Marty!

12:10 PM  
Blogger MortimerBones said...

Thanks Marty. I think it all makes my brain ache!

12:11 PM  
Blogger John Witts said...

It would seem Tom Waits was right:

"What the large print giveth, the small print taketh away".....

:-)

7:39 PM  
Blogger A Rival Wild Pyramid said...

Indeed so - charities have very little exemption from VAT; what they do have is major exemptions from income, capital gains and corporation taxes.

But charities can definitely find ways of minimising their VAT bill, and it would be negligent of the Trustees not to seek to do so....

[Still available for consultation, although my major experience is with HE charities :) ]

1:57 AM  

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