French VAT & Corporation Tax

French VAT & Corporation Tax

Didn't find your answer?

The business is based in the UK has a UK office and trades as a UK company.

From Nov – March rents two chalets in France and operates as a ski chalet company.
Most of the monies is paid to the UK office prior to the ski season.
The business does not arrange airfares but provide full chalet services, breakfast, high teas evening meal, transportation too slopes, lift passes excursions ect….
The business is under the tour operators margin scheme and on this basis are below the VAT threshold and not registered.
Our question is should the business register in France for VAT and Corporation Tax and would be gratefull for any advice/directions on where to get the best advice

Many thanks
daniel short

Replies (2)

Please login or register to join the discussion.

avatar
By User deleted
16th Jun 2008 16:03

Place of Supply
You are not making any supplies in the UK. All of your services are taking place in France.

Place of supply rules under VAT say where property is involved, the place of supply for VAT purposes will be where the property is located. In this case, France.

So in my mind, your charges should be outside the scope of UK VAT (ie, do not charge VAT on property rental, etc), however, you would have to register for VAT in France as you ARE making taxable supplies there. The VAT registration limit for TVA (VAT in France) for non-established persons (ie, someone who has no 'office' or presence in France) is Nil.

As for TOMS, this is a useful website (not me!) :-

http://www.pooley.co.uk/toms_document.htm

Not quite sure how you can be under TOMS but not VAT registered, but hopefully the above link will clarify matters.

Thanks (0)
avatar
By User deleted
14th Jun 2008 15:09

In the same boat
Hi Daniel,

It seems we are in the same boat. We also have a UK Ltd company with Uk offices, sell catered chalet holidays in France to UK customers with all transactions in Sterling. We rent two chalets in Morzine for the ski season, so I think our situations are comparable.

I posted a similar question a couple of months ago on here and still don't know the answer. We are not registered in UK or France for VAT at the moment, but our turnover last winter took us over the threshold of £68,000. The HMRC helpline seemed to think that we had no VAT liability in the UK as all of our suplies were 'outside the scope'. I just wondered why you are on the tour operators scheme and what advantages it gives you? I am looking into this and can't get my head around how it works.

I am pretty sure that you will pay Corporation Tax in the UK like us and therefore won't need to register for the French equivalent unless you have a French branch.

Andy Turner

Thanks (0)