In Dollar Financial UK Ltd v HMRC [2023] UKUT 256 (TCC) (23 October 2023) the Upper Tribunal (UT) held that there was no right to retrospectively amend the date a company joined a VAT group to recover overpaid VAT.
The appellant (DFUK) was the representative member of a UK VAT group. Its US parent – Dollar Financial Group Inc (DFGI) – initially joined the UK VAT group from June 2013. However in September 2016 it applied to retrospectively amend the joining date to July 2012.
The effect of a backdated group registration would be that over £2m of VAT that had been accounted for under the reverse charge on services that had been supplied to DFUK by DFGI would become repayable by HMRC.
In support of its request to amend the grouping date the group argued that DFGI had failed to identify that it had a UK fixed establishment prior...
