VAT Advice re Notice 701/30 (June 2011)

**NOTE: Proposals must be received by 7am GMT 04/07/2013. Selection of the PPH will take place on the same day**

I am the Operations Director for a youth training company. We provide leadership, academic and personal development courses for young people aged 10-18.

We are a for profit limited company. The vast majority of our clients are schools, colleges, universities, government departments, and not for profits/charities. (We have a handful of corporate clients, usually in some way connected to the corporate social responsibility departments.)

I would like specific advice regarding whether we should be charging VAT on our training services to our clients - we currently do and have done since approximately 2005.

If we "shouldn't" be charging VAT due to the nature of the services being provided, I would like additional advice on how we should go about reclaiming this from HMRC. We have been operating since December 2004, but the business activity as is has broadly been in operation since early 2009.

I also seek clarity if the above is true (that we shouldn't be charging VAT on services) as to if input VAT can be reclaimed on corresponding cost of sales. My understanding is not, but that it can still be reclaimed on business overheads.

I welcome all types of tender for this work, e.g. hourly (with a total estimate), fixed rate, "no win no fee commission on reclaim amount", etc.

For information our turnover over the last 4 financial years combined is in the region of £2.7m, and our website address is www.future-foundations.co.uk - this may help you understand the nature of our training programmes better.

Look forward to hearing from you!