Specialist Chartered Accountants based in East Anglia

Lovewell Blake Chartered Accountants

Media Centre

Bad News - extension of VAT

24 March 2012

Apart from the so-called pie tax Vat is not an area that has attracted much media attention – but the devil really is in the detail.

If you are living in a listed building and planning to make modifications in the near future you’d do well to bring forward this work.  Modifications have been zero rated — no doubt to designed to take into account the higher cost of work on listed buildings but it is felt this concession could actually be encouraging people to make modifications rather than carry out more straight forward repairs which are already standard rated.  So from October 1 all work on listed buildings will be charged at the standard rate as on other properties.

There are other nasties affecting VAT, too.  Self-storage will be subject to VAT from October 1 bringing this into line with other forms of storage.

Measures are being introduced to ensure that the purchase of holiday caravans is taxed consistently at the standard rate so too will the rental of a chair in a hairdressing salon. 

The one aspect which has been widely publicised is the VAT that will now be applied to hot take away food such as pies, pasties and rotisserie chickens which have until now been zero rated.