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Post by TonyDunkley on Nov 29, 2019 17:25:08 GMT
He is using the BS situation as a way of stalling CRT in an attempt to have the technical details of the "rivers only license" examined and corrected in order that he can purchase a pleasure boat certificate. The fact that a "rivers only license" is for all intents and purposes a pleasure boat certificate seems to be outside of the argument. The last thing TD wants at this stage is for CRT to sell him a "rivers only license" that would be a failure. Most people would think that getting the boat "legal" would be the ideal outcome but in this situation it is not. The idea here is to pull CRT up on some legal and technical points and it is an interesting strategy. Probably a bit stressful but at the end of the day someone has to do it at some point if they feel aggrieved enough. I personally think the continued use of mildly offensive terms to describe CRT employees might ultimately go against him but everyone has their own way of operating. The quality of writing and precision of detail used in the communications is certainly laudable. It seems to me highly unlikely that the judge at the appeal hearing will view the approach as the elegant and subtle strategy you describe it as. The grounds for Appeal of the 15 August 2019 Order are simply that my boat was not sunk, stranded, or abandoned on C&RT controlled waters, nor was it on those waters without "lawful authority", and was therefore beyond the legitimate reach of C&RT's Section 8 powers. Arguments about BSS exemption criteria won't come into it. Appeal of C&RT's BSS nonsense is entirely a matter for the statutory Standards Appeal Panel, . . which, it appears, they have allowed to lapse into oblivion !
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Post by bod on Nov 29, 2019 18:00:20 GMT
Reading that link, especially the "Value added Tax in the United Kingdom" section, Rates section. Statutory Fees are outside the VAT remit. Quoting MOT and Congestion charges. As C&RT licences are demanded by Statue, ie BW Act 1971-1995 etc. Is there an argument that all boat licences should be free of VAT?
Bod
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Post by Deleted on Nov 29, 2019 19:36:21 GMT
It seems to me highly unlikely that the judge at the appeal hearing will view the approach as the elegant and subtle strategy you describe it as. The grounds for Appeal of the 15 August 2019 Order are simply that my boat was not sunk, stranded, or abandoned on C&RT controlled waters, nor was it on those waters without "lawful authority", and was therefore beyond the legitimate reach of C&RT's Section 8 powers. Arguments about BSS exemption criteria won't come into it. Appeal of C&RT's BSS nonsense is entirely a matter for the statutory Standards Appeal Panel, . . which, it appears, they have allowed to lapse into oblivion ! “He piled upon the whale's white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart's shell upon it.”
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Post by Deleted on Nov 29, 2019 19:53:39 GMT
Blimey that's a bit technical !
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Post by TonyDunkley on Nov 29, 2019 20:47:04 GMT
Reading that link, especially the "Value added Tax in the United Kingdom" section, Rates section. Statutory Fees are outside the VAT remit. Quoting MOT and Congestion charges. As C&RT licences are demanded by Statue, ie BW Act 1971-1995 etc. Is there an argument that all boat licences should be free of VAT?
Bod
There certainly is such an argument, Bod, and it was taken up with C&RT's predecessors a long time ago, . . late 1970's or early '80's if I remember correctly. After a lot of 'umming and 'ahhring, and delay, they [BWB] came up with a load of waffle about how charging Tolls or Licence fees to any sort of vessel, commercial or pleasure craft, was the same thing as charging for providing a 'service' and therefore subject to VAT at standard rate. Looking back on that, and knowing what I know now, that just might have been one of the first occasions when they made use of what has since become their ultimate all purpose fall back position and arguably the most abused and misused piece of inland waterway legislation on the statute book - none other than Sections 43(3), with the addition of 43(8) when deemed necessary, of the 1962 Transport Act, . . now routinely wheeled out by C&RT's lawyers on every occasion when they need to come up with some sort of plausible sounding pseudo-legalistic claptrap to lend credence to their most recent outbreak of corporate megalomania. The info in the 'wiki' link you've referred to above is of course the reason for the EA rightly not charging VAT to pleasure craft taking out one of their river registrations, . . and one of the probable reasons for the shysters at C&RT, and at BWB before them, re-christening their statutory river registration process, the statutory Pleasure Boat Certificate, as a 'Rivers Only Licence'.
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Post by bod on Nov 29, 2019 21:55:25 GMT
It will need a true VAT expert to look at it, and HMRC to give a definite answer.
Bod
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Post by TonyDunkley on Nov 29, 2019 22:21:54 GMT
It will need a true VAT expert to look at it, and HMRC to give a definite answer. Bod Well, . . I'm not so sure about that, . . it seems fairly clear cut to me. VAT is essentially a tax on goods and services, and I would doubt that anyone other than an outfit like C&RT could ever come to view selling a licence of any sort as a service ! I'm very glad you've brought this up, because if it was possible to convince a good proportion of the pleasure boaters who buy a boat Licence every year that they're being conned out of the VAT they're forking out and they begin to kick up a fuss about it, then the pressure on C&RT to work and operate within the law instead of routinely flouting every aspect of it that doesn't happen to suit them could possibly increase to a level which they could no longer ignore.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 29, 2019 23:48:33 GMT
The grounds for Appeal of the 15 August 2019 Order are simply that my boat was not sunk, stranded, or abandoned on C&RT controlled waters, nor was it on those waters without "lawful authority", and was therefore beyond the legitimate reach of C&RT's Section 8 powers. Arguments about BSS exemption criteria won't come into it. Appeal of C&RT's BSS nonsense is entirely a matter for the statutory Standards Appeal Panel, . . which, it appears, they have allowed to lapse into oblivion ! “He piled upon the whale's white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart's shell upon it.” Moby Dick is one of the hardest books to read. Rog
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Post by Deleted on Nov 30, 2019 8:51:49 GMT
Moby Dick is one of the hardest books to read. Rog Ooh er matron !
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Post by naughtyfox on Nov 30, 2019 9:01:13 GMT
Moby Dick is one of the hardest books to read. Rog Ooh er matron ! I was tempted to edit dogless's text... but won't. Just needs a few letters removing. Anyway, back on subject, how about distributing information about this VAT issue to all boaters? Perhaps it's about time a proper organisation was made for boaters to give them some clout?
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Post by Deleted on Nov 30, 2019 9:07:29 GMT
R to h yes and an apostrophe s... it's best not to be -quite- that puerile old chap.
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Post by NigelMoore on Nov 30, 2019 9:55:00 GMT
It will need a true VAT expert to look at it, and HMRC to give a definite answer. HMRC would certainly give a definitive answer, but of dubious value, and hardly the answer one might wish for. They have a long history of unilaterally declaring what should be subject to VAT with scant regard to legal technicalities. On past performance, they would be likely to enthusiastically support the imposition of VAT on licences & certificates of registration. I long had dealings with Richard Everett who took HMRC to the Tribunal (in 1995) over VAT imposition on converted barges used as residential vessels. He won, and because of protracted delays in HMRC dealing with the awarded costs, ended up making a tidy profit from the litigation (unusual) by reason of statutory interest rates. HMRC then insisted that purpose-built replicas could not enjoy the newly confirmed zero-rating status of converted ex-commercial barges, and 2 cases subsequently went before the relevant Tribunal – re: John Grieve and Colin Stone. These came to opposing conclusions, so they appealed the Stone decision to the High Court and lost (2008). The court decided that such vessels being built specifically for residential use (notwithstanding they could also be used for recreation or pleasure), they also enjoyed the status of qualifying ships. The HMRC published guides necessarily changed with each adverse decision. As an aside, with respect to narrowboats, they subsequently unilaterally applied a different formula for determining the tonnage value, so that no narrowboat could every qualify – surely a blatant 2 fingers up to the appropriate legislation.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 30, 2019 10:10:09 GMT
Below is the information given out by CRT several years ago when the issue was being discussed at several meetings.
The Trust is required by legislation to be registered for VAT. If you are registered for VAT you must charge VAT on all of your supplies where the law requires it.
A VAT registered business regularly completes a VAT return in which it pays to HM Revenue & Customs all of the VAT it has collected from customers and reclaims all of the VAT it has incurred on goods and services it has acquired.
However it is only possible to reclaim any VAT incurred if the VAT can be attributed to taxable business activities. The majority of all expenditure on the general maintenance and major repairs of the canal infrastructure includes VAT.
Prior to 1989 British Waterways (BW) did not charge VAT on its boat licences and as a result was unable to recover VAT on its general repairs and maintenance of the canals.
In 1989 BW opted to charge VAT on its property including canals to enable it to generate taxable activities (including charging VAT on the boat licence) on the canals, which in turn enabled BW to recover the VAT incurred on general maintenance and refurbishment.
At the time BW did not increase the overall cost of the boat licence to the customer. If for example the licence at the time cost £300, after BW opted to charge VAT the licence still cost £300 (£255+ £45 VAT). In other words this cost was not passed on to BW’s customers.
The Trust has continued to apply the same options to charge VAT.
Without this option to charge VAT on the boat licence, at today’s level of expenditure on the canal infrastructure, the Trust would be losing up to £20 million per annum in lost VAT on the general and major repairs, and the price of the boat licence and other income streams would need to be increased by a significant amount to offset this loss.
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Post by TonyDunkley on Nov 30, 2019 10:47:56 GMT
A great point of discussion - but not on this thread! It's complicated enough already. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . BUT, this subject is not really complicated. Tony wants CRT to issue him with a Pleasure Boat Certificate, CRT are pretending no such thing exists and have thrown the BSS issue (red herring) into the ring to muddy the waters (just like their muddy canals!). Exactly, Ross, . . couldn't agree more, . . anyone finding all this difficult or complicated is allowing themselves to be sucked in and distracted by the mind numbing nonsense that C&RT, just like their predecessors, invariably dump huge amounts of all over things that either aren't going their way or that they're seriously nervous about, . . or both ! They've been happy to carry on with what has to be one of the longest running examples of arrogance inspired dishonesty ever pulled off by the supposed guardians of an historical public asset, and now they've been caught. It's just a great pity that so few of the pleasure boating public realize how they've been had, . . and that even fewer of them appear prepared to join in with doing something about it. I'm very grateful to Bod for bringing up the question of VAT on boat Licences again, though, . . it's been far too long since C&RT's predecessors had their cages rattled about that !
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Post by TonyDunkley on Nov 30, 2019 10:58:44 GMT
Below is the information given out by CRT several years ago when the issue was being discussed at several meetings. The Trust is required by legislation to be registered for VAT. If you are registered for VAT you must charge VAT on all of your supplies where the law requires it. A VAT registered business regularly completes a VAT return in which it pays to HM Revenue & Customs all of the VAT it has collected from customers and reclaims all of the VAT it has incurred on goods and services it has acquired. However it is only possible to reclaim any VAT incurred if the VAT can be attributed to taxable business activities. The majority of all expenditure on the general maintenance and major repairs of the canal infrastructure includes VAT. Prior to 1989 British Waterways (BW) did not charge VAT on its boat licences and as a result was unable to recover VAT on its general repairs and maintenance of the canals. In 1989 BW opted to charge VAT on its property including canals to enable it to generate taxable activities (including charging VAT on the boat licence) on the canals, which in turn enabled BW to recover the VAT incurred on general maintenance and refurbishment. At the time BW did not increase the overall cost of the boat licence to the customer. If for example the licence at the time cost £300, after BW opted to charge VAT the licence still cost £300 (£255+ £45 VAT). In other words this cost was not passed on to BW’s customers. The Trust has continued to apply the same options to charge VAT. Without this option to charge VAT on the boat licence, at today’s level of expenditure on the canal infrastructure, the Trust would be losing up to £20 million per annum in lost VAT on the general and major repairs, and the price of the boat licence and other income streams would need to be increased by a significant amount to offset this loss. Thanks for that, Steve, very useful. Complete tripe from beginning to end, of course, but what else would you expect ? Can you put a names and a date to it ?
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