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VATupdate Newsletter Week 36 2023

MAGIC

Many people believe that VAT people are wizards. Or sorcerers, even. This is first of all caused by the strange rules and the many exceptions. And secondly, because VAT people find solutions that ‘normal people’ cannot believe are possible.

You may remember the first time you saw a magician flipping a coin or a playing card and having it reappearing from behind your ear. Tricks! Smoke and mirrors! It’s a pity that we grow over that naivety, as sometimes it can be great to believe in something that doesn’t really exist.

In some cases, there is no magic at all, but just a misunderstanding. Long before the Bible was widely available in print, peasants would go to church and hear the priests, in Latin, intone “Hoc est corpus”, when holding up the bread for the communion ceremony. Which means “This is the body (of Christ)”.

Being both illiterate and totally unfamiliar with Latin, those poor and uneducated congregants heard “Hoc est corpus”, as “Hocus Pocus”. And that’s the actual origin of the well-known expression for various questionable claims of magic.

VAT has its own ‘slang’ and specific phrases that non-VAT people don’t always understand. How often have you seen the phrase ‘Europe has a VAT-tax’?. Not sure if it’s just me, but ‘VAT’ means ‘Value Added Tax’, so there is already the word ‘tax’ in it. ‘VAT-tax’’ sound wrong to me.

I guess that we all have our own ‘magical world’. For the VATupdate Team that’s the VAT-world.

“Beyond the everyday world, both counsel have explained to us, lies the world of VAT, a kind of fiscal theme park in which factual and legal realities are suspended or inverted.”

A quote from an old VAT-case that VAT people like to use a lot. Because it’s true. And that’s why we like it.

If you have any comments, questions, or ideas that you want to share with us, please send us an email at [email protected] or leave a comment under the posts of this newsletter on LinkedIn.


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