Deadline for registering for exemption from VAT penalties expires on 30th November

A reminder to any members that may have incorrectly applied VAT when supplying Direct Marketing services that the deadline for registering for the “transitional arrangements” or exemption from retrospective penalties expires on the 30^th November 2015

To briefly recap HMRC has agreed not to take any retrospective action where either:

• Postage costs have been zero rated as part of a single supply of zero rated print

Or

• door drop delivery costs have been zero rated as part of a single supply of zero rated print

Before the 1^st August 2015.

Businesses must register with HMRC before 30^th November 2015 if they wish to take advantage of this exemption – it is not automatically applied.

Full details can be found here:

Any, or all, of these activities can be included as part of a zero rated supply as “ancillary services” both before 1^st August and in future:

• creative design, drafting and preparation of printed matter
• printing of direct mail packs using pre-sorted or unsorted data provided by the printing supplier’s customer, so that the mail packs include names, addresses, postcodes and barcodes
• printing of direct mail packs and correction of data supplied by the printing supplier’s customer - data correction includes only:
  • amendment in accordance with Royal Mail address format guidance
  • amendment to comply with the requirements of the Mail Preference Service
  • removal of ‘gone-aways’ and the deceased