In this month’s VAT updates, Graham Elliott considers whether dating services are consultancy, a volunteer running a bar for charity and if HMRC’s enquiries service left a club in no man’s land
Case: Consultancy or dating services
A First Tier Tribunal has been asked to decide whether the definition of ‘consultancy’ fits with services of providing clients with opportunities to date other people (matchmaker services) where the approach involves interviewing and qualitative assessment of a client’s characteristics and how these may correspond with characteristics of people on the ‘books’ of the matchmaker (Gray & Farrar International LLP and the Commissioners for Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, [2019] UKFTT 684)
The relevance relates to the place of supply rules, which are only applicable where the client is a private consumer who lives outside the EU. In that case, the provision of consultancy services is regarded as supplied where the customer belongs, and this means no UK VAT arises. But if the service is something other than consultancy (or the provision of data – not the provision of a date), the supply defaults to being deemed performed where the supplier belongs, namely in the UK.
