TOMS VAT rules change

Background

The Tour Operators Margin Scheme (TOMS) is a mandatory EU VAT accounting scheme for businesses which buy in and sell on certain travel services, such as passenger transport, hotel accommodation and car hire report Harris & Co accountants Northampton, the spcialist small business accountants who handle the VAT affairs of many of their small business clients. Under normal VAT accounting rules, businesses which supply these services in several Member States would have to register, recover VAT on their costs, and account for VAT on their sales in each Member State in which they make supplies. Under TOMS, they cannot recover any VAT on the services they buy in, but only account for VAT on their profit margin in the Member State where they are established.

In the UK, we only apply TOMS to supplies to final consumers or to businesses for their own consumption (for example, business travel for employees). Travel services supplied to another business for onward sale ("wholesale" supplies) are subject to normal VAT rules.

We also require businesses to carry out their TOMS calculation annually using global figures for the year as a whole.

The ECJ decisions

The EU Commission initiated infraction proceedings against eight Member States (Spain, Poland, Italy, Czech Republic, Greece, France, Finland and Portugal) in connection with their operation of TOMS, and the ECJ released its decision in these proceedings on 26 September 2013. The Court ruled that:

These decisions are binding on all Member States. However, after careful consideration, we have decided that there will be no changes to the operation of TOMS in the UK at this stage, and that businesses should continue to follow existing guidance. This is because:

We will review this after a year.

Direct effect

It is open for any business to apply direct effect and operate TOMS in accordance with the Court"s decisions. For example, it is possible that some tour operators may gain a benefit from including wholesale supplies within TOMS, in which case they may choose to do so if they wish.

Further information

Full guidance on TOMS is given in VAT Notice 709/5, "Tour Operators Margin Scheme". The treatment of wholesale supplies is explained at paragraph 3.1, and details of the margin scheme calculation are at sections 5 and 8 to 12.