Blue Chip Hotels v HMRC

In Blue Chip Hotels v HMRC [2016] UKFTT 309 (6 May 2016) the FTT found that the hire out of a room licensed for civil wedding ceremonies was not an exempt supply of land under VATA 1994 Sch 9 Group 1.

The issue was whether the hire out of a room in which civil wedding ceremonies were carried out was an exempt supply of land or part of a single taxable supply of a ‘wedding package’ including catering which was standard-rated.

The parties had agreed that the Levob test (Case C-41/04) should be applied: whether elements of a supply ‘are so closely linked that they form objectively a single indivisible economic supply which it would be artificial to split’. The FTT found that customers could separate the elements of the wedding package ‘without entering the realms of artificiality’. The FTT pointed out in particular to the physical separation...