In Leeds City Council v HMRC [2015] EWCA Civ 1293 (17 December 2015) the Court of Appeal found that the limitation period under VATA 1994 s 80 applied to the council even though HMRC had been wrong.
Leeds City Council (Leeds) had made claims for the repayment of wrongly paid VAT under the Sixth VAT Directive Art 4.5 which applies to local authorities in respect of their activities as public authorities and provides that they are not to be considered as taxable persons unless treatment as non-taxable persons would lead to significant distortions of competition. The UK had not transposed Art 4.5 into domestic law. However it was common ground that it was directly effective that almost all the relevant activities fell within it and that treatment of Leeds as a non-taxable person would not give rise to significant distortions of competition.
HMRC was therefore...
