Colchester Institute Corporation v HMRC

In Colchester Institute Corporation v HMRC [2020] UKUT 368 (TCC) (22 December 2020) CIC provided education to students. The majority of this education was state-funded; at the time of the events giving rise to the appeal both parties agreed that such education was a non-business activity for VAT purposes.

CIC commenced on a large building project in 2008. (It appears that the project did not qualify for zero-rating as the construction of a building intended for use solely for a relevant charitable purpose.) It reclaimed input tax on the construction costs in full under the Lennartz principle (i.e. that input tax is recoverable in full ‘up front’ provided that output tax in respect of non-business use is accounted for in the first and subsequent VAT accounting periods) and accounted for the relevant output tax on deemed supplies (‘Lennartz output tax’) in that period and continued to...