- UK import VAT recovery depends on the claimant’s legal right to dispose of the goods as owner and their use in the business, not merely on who handled customs clearance or paid import costs.
- Legal title need not pass before importation if the purchaser already has the commercial right to dispose of the goods; retention-of-title clauses must be assessed commercially.
- Repairers or service providers who never own the goods generally cannot recover import VAT just because importation was necessary for their services.
- Postponed VAT Accounting only changes when import VAT is paid; it does not override normal input tax restriction rules for exempt or non-business use.
- In TSI Instruments Ltd v HMRC, the FTT denied import VAT recovery where the taxpayer imported customers’ instruments for repair, never owned them, and merely built clearance costs into service charges; the assessments were upheld, reduced to £8,432,896.86.
Source: vatabout.com
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.
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