Using advanced technology to reduce the cost of attending seminars

I explained in the November Business Briefing that the changes to the place of supply rules for international services could make the VAT treatment more complex for presenting seminars.

Generally we present seminars in the UK and therefore the place of supply is the UK. This is because the place of supply is where the seminar is presented and not where the customer belongs. We therefore raise UK standard rated invoices to these customers regardless of where they come from and whether or not they are deemed to be a business.

If we present seminars in any other EC country we need to register for VAT in that country. We then charge all people who attend the seminars the rate of VAT applicable in that country.  Again regardless of where they come from and whether or not they are deemed to be a business.

The process of registering for VAT and submitting returns in other EC countries is not a straightforward matter. Your VAT administrators need to have a command of the local language because not all of the countries readily communicate with you in English and the forms you need to complete are not multilingual. Although each of the countries conform to an EU-wide system of VAT, they all have their own idiosyncrasies. This requires you to have an intimate understanding of each country’s local system of VAT.

Many people travel from other EC countries and other parts of the world to attend our seminars in the UK. We are concerned about the costs that these customers incur and would like to give more people from abroad the opportunity to benefit from our seminars. We could travel to these countries to deliver the seminars and register for VAT in each of the other 26 EC countries. Rather than do this and incur all the associated costs we decided to carry out a year long study to establish best practice for delivering seminars over the internet. This led to a heavy investment to create the right facilities in our offices in the UK. I am proud to say we have found the right solution to deliver high quality live online seminars.

For details of our live online presentations of UK VAT and International Services please click here.

We are in the process of designing other online seminars which will address other aspects of VAT and also International Financial Reporting Standards.

Stephen Smith
Managing Director
UK Training (Worldwide) Limited