Changing legal status and deregistering for VAT

Changing legal status and deregistering for VAT

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I have a few retail outlets some with the same business and some with different businesses. These are sole trader businesses - is it possible to sell them to different Ltd companys that I would control and then deregister for VAT?
Paul Austen

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By theaardvark
06th Oct 2005 10:49

Yes.
You can separate these into different legal entities. However, if you fail to do so correctly and HMRC can show that there is in fact just one legal entity then they can retrospectively re-register you.

Assuming that you do correctly create separate legal entities, if HMRC decide that the split is artificial they can direct that the different entities be treated as a single entity. However, this type of direction is not retrospective. The fact that the different legal entities run different outlets may be sufficient to avoid this type of direction but it is difficult to be sure without looking at the situation in detail.

Regards

Paul Taylor
VATease - VAT Advice

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