United Kingdom: UT Dismisses VNS Waste Solutions Appeal in VAT Debarment Case

The Upper Tribunal dismissed VNS Waste Solutions’ appeal, upholding the FTT’s refusal to bar HMRC from defending the case.
HMRC was allowed to advance alternative positions: (i) deny input VAT under Kittel because the trader knew or should have known of VAT fraud, and (ii) argue there was no supply, so no input VAT recovery arose.
The UT held there is nothing inherently wrong with HMRC pleading both Kittel and no-supply arguments at the same time, provided both are properly pleaded and supported by evidence.
The tribunal rejected the claim that the no-supply argument had to be decided first or that HMRC’s case had no reasonable prospects of success; it said the evidence should be assessed holistically to reach the correct VAT outcome.

Note that this post was (partially) written with the help of AI. It is always useful to review the original source material, and where needed to obtain (local) advice from a specialist.