12 March 2020 
Amanda Darley, Head of Operations and Engagement
Well, this is the big university tax news from the Budget, just in case you missed it! VAT on a range of e-publications will be removed from 1 December 2020. The Overview of Tax Legislation and Rates (OOTLAR - section 2.21) specifically mentions that the new zero-rating will apply to ‘e-books, e-newspapers, e-magazines and academic e-journals’ so hugely useful to universities.
The government will consult on the detail before legislation is enacted, so BUFDG will liaise with members and other relevant parties such as SCONUL, Jisc and purchasing consortia to respond to the consultation.
(And it’s nice to know that in my last week as a tax specialist, my budget prediction was spot on!).
In the meantime, it’s not yet clear what this means for the current retrospective claims that many of you are currently compiling and submitting to your suppliers. We don’t know if the Budget announcement will affect how HMRC proceeds (or not) with their appeal against the Upper Tribunal News Corp decision, or whether they will now be more open to paying out these claims, or more likely to refuse them and try to at least retain this past VAT if at all possible. We hope there will be some clarity on this in the coming days. If you think any of your suppliers may have March period ends and you have not yet submitted claims for that period, you should keep an eye on this issue over the next week or so, to make sure you don’t lost the opportunity to claim for the period ending 31 March 2016 before that period falls out of time.
