09 June 2020 
Andrea Marshall, Tax Specialist
Good news! The introduction of the domestic reverse VAT charge for construction services has been postponed from 1 October 2020 to 1 March 2021.
Although this is unlikely to directly impact on universities (as they will be classed as “consumers” or “final customers” in the building and construction services supply chain), you may need to look into whether this applies to you if your university recharges construction services to other parties or have a subsidiary development company that does work for parties other than the university.
Also contractors are likely to ask you to confirm that the domestic reverse charge does not apply to you. In their guidance HMRC suggest that the following wording is used:
‘We are an end user for the purposes of section 55A VAT Act 1994 reverse charge for building and construction services. Please issue us with a normal VAT invoice, with VAT charged at the appropriate rate. We will not account for the reverse charge.’
The link to HMRC’s full guidance on the domestic reverse charge can be found here.
A Revenue & Customs Brief regarding the delay to the introduction can be found here.
