Insider

Michael Pawley’s take on day-to-day corporate finance

Do VAT rules have to be so complicated?

VAT is causing me a bit of a headache at the moment and brings me back to one of my biggest bugbears – the complexity of legislation that continues to affect our businesses and which still seems to grow day by day despite the promises of all the politicians.

One of my businesses falls under the classification of a “Tour Operator” for VAT purposes and hence we have a highly complex VAT accounting scheme to maintain, not charging VAT to our clients but having to account for VAT from the margin we make on certain of our supplies.

Next month we have to do our annual adjustment under the scheme – not looking forward to that.

At least I don’t have the combination of the Capital Goods Scheme & Partial Exemption to deal with as I did with a previous business.

It’s all work for us accountants I suppose but highly complex for small businesses to understand and to monitor the changes that inevitably come along. I see from my inbox that there’s a new version of the FRSSE too so another good read ahead.

Posted on Friday, 27th June 2008 at 11:16 am, in Tax.
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One comment on “Do VAT rules have to be so complicated?”

  1. John Crawford says:
    July 2nd, 2008 at 12:25 pm

    We offer an advisory service and understand the problems small businesses face. It is a complex self-accounting tax and with the new penalty regime coming into play, businesses need to be even more vigilant.

    Do contact us if you would like some specific advice.

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