New treatments, new exemptions

THE EUROPEAN COURT of Justice's ruling in d'Ambrumenil v CCE (Case C-307/01) [2003] on the taxation of peripheral non-medical health services such as a doctor writing an insurance report is still being digested in the UK. Meanwhile earlier this year the European Court gave a ruling in Solleveld v Staatssectaris van Financiën; Van den Hout-van Eijnsbergen v Staatssectaris van Financiën (C-443/04 and C-444/04) which potentially extends the scope for exemption of medical services by health care professionals beyond the restricted categories HMRC currently recognise.

The problem for practitioners advising health care professionals has been two-fold:

• either HMRC did not recognise the medical practice as being proper to a particular field even though the health professional was on one of the recognised registers; or
• the medical procedure might have been a standard one and performed by a health professional but not one belonging...