The Claimants in the Royal Mail Group Litigation and Royal Mail Group Ltd

In The Claimants in the Royal Mail Group Litigation and Royal Mail Group Ltd [2021] EWCA Civ 1173 (28 July 2021) the Court of Appeal dismissed the appeals and held that the traders did not have an actionable private law right to compel Royal Mail to issue VAT invoices.

This is the latest development in the long-running saga of the VAT treatment of certain commercial services provided by Royal Mail. Historically these had always been regarded as exempt but a decision of the European Court in 2009 found that they were in fact standard rated. Although the recipients were not charged VAT on pre-2009 services some of them have attempt to argue that there was nonetheless a VAT element to the charge and that it should be available to them as input tax. Litigation on that point with HMRC is not yet concluded but this case approaches the problem...