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Supreme Court excludes investment trusts’ claims

The Supreme Court has held that a customer overcharged VAT by a supplier will not, generally, have a restitutionary right to recover that overcharged VAT from HMRC. Nick Skerrett and Gary Barnett (Simmons & Simmons) analyse the decision.
 

In its latest milestone judgment the Supreme Court has held that a consumer does not generally have a right to recover VAT which it has overpaid to its supplier directly from HMRC and cannot therefore sidestep the four year limitation period in VATA 1994 s 80(4): HMRC v The Investment Trust Companies [2017] UKSC 29 (reported in Tax Journal 21 April 2017).

Following a lengthy review of the principles of unjust enrichment the court considered that the principle of unjust enrichment does not provide a customer with a general restitutionary right to repayment directly from HMRC as the relationship between customer and HMRC is too indirect. Furthermore the court considered that...

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