Birmingham Hippodrome Theatre Trust v HMRC

In Birmingham Hippodrome Theatre Trust v HMRC (A3/2013/1012) the Court of Appeal dismissed the theatre’s appeal against HMRC’s decision to set off wrongly repaid input tax against VAT wrongly paid by the theatre.

Both the FTT and the Upper Tribunal (UT) had found in favour of HMRC.

Under EU law (Sixth Directive Art 13A) member states were required to exempt from VAT ‘certain cultural services and goods closely linked thereto supplied by bodies governed by public law or by other cultural bodies recognised by the member state concerned’. The UK had only complied in 1996 six years after the deadline imposed by the directive by inserting a new group 13 into VATA 1994 sch 9. HMRC then interpreted the provision restrictively until it was found wrong by the ECJ in 2002 (Zoological Society of London (Case C-267/00). This meant that the theatre had a Fleming claim ([2008]...