In Claimants in the Royal Mail Group Litigation v Royal Mail Group Ltd [2022] EWHC 704 (Ch) (28 March 2022) the High Court (HC) concluded inter alia that the Royal Mail had correctly treated several services as exempt from VAT (with the exception of ‘door-to door’ services).
The dispute formed part of litigation during which the claimants had sought various forms of relief to claim VAT on services provided by the Royal Mail which was not invoiced at the time but which (so the claimants argued) must in law have been included within their payments to the Royal Mail. The litigation was separate from (but related to) the litigation in Zipvit which the taxpayer lost at the CJEU (Case C‑156/20).
The HC was asked to resolve two questions. First it had to decide whether certain services (referred to during proceedings as the ‘sample services’) were correctly treated as exempt...