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Beat the Credit Crunch with a VAT Refund

In the current depressed financial climate, making sure you don’t overpay taxes can be a critical factor and that includes VAT.

Did you know that under the VAT Urban Regeneration rules that if you convert a house into flats or one flat into two flats, you may only have to pay your builder VAT at a special 5% rate? This applies to the carrying out of work on the fabric of the building as well as the provision of utility services such as water electricity and drainage. That can be quite a saving. The same can apply if you renovate a residential building that has not been lived in for three years or more or if you convert a commercial building into a residential one. In some cases where the 5% rate is applicable you might even be able to claim that back from HMRC.

The above are only some examples of the type of developments that qualify for the 5% VAT rate but we have found that even though the rules were introduced in 2001, there are still a large number of people that are unaware of its existence and developers can be paying more VAT than they need to.

If you have undertaken a residential property project in the last three years and either paid more than 5% VAT on your building costs and/or not recovered the VAT from HMRC, we can undertake a VAT review for you on a ‘no win no fee basis’ to see if you have overpaid any VAT and if you have we’ll charge 20% (plus VAT, unfortunately not at 5%!) of any refunds we manage to obtain for you. If this is of interest, please let us know.

For advice and assistance on tax enquiries contact help@bkltax.co.uk or your usual consultant. And for more on BKL Tax visit our revamped website www.bkltax.co.uk.