A belly dancer who has performed before royalty has been ordered to pay £50,000 in VAT after a First Tier Tribunal (FTT) ruled that the classes she taught did not meet the regulations regarding exemption for private tuition.
Audrey Cheruvier, the director of Fleur Estelle Belly Dance School, appealed against an HMRC decision that supplying tuition in belly dancing was taxable. Cheruvier agreed she had to pay VAT on classes taught by self-employed teachers, but argued that those she taught herself were exempt.
Cheruvier's claim rested on professional advice she had been given which suggested that her own classes came within the scope of Item 2 of Group 6 of Schedule 9 to the Value Added Tax Act 1994 (VATA). This covers the supply of private tuition, in a subject ordinarily taught in a school or university, by an individual teacher acting independently of an employer.
Cheruvier told the tribunal she provided a 'serious and systematic course of study and instruction' to a syllabus which offered graded levels involving dance techniques, interpretation and choreography so that students reached a professional performance standard'. She claimed that this put her classes on equal footing with dance tuition as taught in schools and at some universities.
While the tribunal accepted that Cheruvier had acted in good faith and was 'an entirely credible witness', it did not accept this argument, saying that while she taught to a syllabus, it was 'one of her own devising' and had not been independently verified by an external standards body or system of assessment since none exists for this discipline.
The tribunal also pointed out that the belly dancer was not able to demonstrate that the form of dancing she teaches is a component part of any dance course taught at a school or a university, other than in the very general sense of covering posture, movement and response to music.
Cheruvier has now been ordered to pay £52,921 for VAT liabilities going back to June 2009. The 28-year old dancer, who has appeared on UK television and performed before the royal families of a number of Middle Eastern countries, accepted the ruling, saying she had been 'naive' in trusting advice about her VAT status.
