17 February 2018
This affects for-profit sports clubs which recharge affiliation fees onto its members.
A sport’s governing body, or similar, often charges an affiliation fee to individual clubs who make an onward charge to their members. Where the clubs are non-profit making, the supply of this affiliation fee to their individual members is exempt from VAT.
However, if the club is a profit-making commercial club, then the supply to their individual member is standard rated.
The original concession aimed to put profit-making commercial clubs in a similar position to non-profit making clubs. So they did not need to account for output tax on the fee charged. It achieved this by way of concession, treating the recharge as a disbursement.
However, the concession goes beyond HMRC’s discretion and is being withdrawn with effect from 1 April 2018.
What Does This Mean?
This means that clubs need to make arrangements to charge VAT at the standard rate of 20% on these charges with effect from 1 April 2018. Unless they meet the condition of a disbursement.
The withdrawal of the concession has no impact on the VAT treatment of affiliation fees by non-profit making sports governing bodies.
In their case, the charge they make for affiliation fees will continue to be exempt under the law. If they are partly exempt for the purposes of calculating their recoverable input tax, such bodies should ensure that they continue to include affiliation fees in their exempt and total supplies in any appropriate partial exemption calculation.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/revenue-and-customs-brief-1-2018-vat-treatment-of-affiliation-fees-for-sports-clubs/revenue-and-customs-brief-1-2018-vat-treatment-of-affiliation-fees-for-sports-clubs.
If these changes affect your club, don’t leave this to chance, speak to your advisors or speak to us, our VAT and Tax advice is not as expensive as you think.
