PRESS RELEASE: 9 April 2003

Happy 30th Birthday to VAT - the "fiscal theme park"

TaxationWeb.co.uk, UK's dedicated tax website, is celebrating the 30th anniversary of the introduction of VAT by launching a new, dedicated VAT section (www.taxationweb.co.uk/vat), in association with VATEase, a VAT consultancy company. The VAT section promises to feature news updates on the VAT world, articles, training, software, jobs and other VAT-related information and services.

All those years ago, when VAT was introduced, the Labour Chancellor Tony Barber promised us VAT would be a simple tax! No doubt he has since been made to eat those words - after all VAT is the tax, which the Lord Justice Sedgley denounced as being "a fiscal theme park, in which relatively uncomplicated solutions are a snare and diversion". Anybody who deals with the tax regularly will know just what a gem and how true this quote was!

VAT has seen many many changes in it's 30 years including rate changes, introduction of new rates, the embarrassing gaff made by policy which was called the "toothbrush scheme" and the subsequent abolishment of it, changes in retail schemes, the introduction of compulsory vat bad debt notifications that had to be sent to customers to effectively tell them you were writing their debt off, (now no longer required) and finally how about the change in the interpretation on the law in relation to opticians which meant millions of pounds being paid out by the Treasury which then resulted in the introduction of the "unjust enrichment" clauses.

This is the tax that over its' 30 years has seen VAT Tribunal Chairmen discuss whether a "Jaffa cake" is a biscuit or cake, whether the eating of ornamental carp is eccentric and the question 'when is a car not a car?' (The answer was when you can only get 7 people in the back of it with their bodies bent doubled with their heads on their knees!)

It has grown to be a tax that knows no geographical boundary - so businesses dealing with other countries (not always just the EU!) have an obligation to know about the worldwide VAT systems that exist and what the implications are for them. (It was, of course, too simple to ensure that the VAT systems were the same, at least in the EU).

So Happy Birthday VAT - no doubt we will continue to ride in your fiscal theme park, being scared by your ghost trains, feeling the lurch in our stomachs your big dipper provides and taking a gamble in your fruit machines that the interpretation and ever-changing legislation provides.

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