Readers' forum : Place of supply

We act for a music business in the UK which is having a problem with self-employed musicians and recording engineers based in Italy. The UK client uses these workers when it holds recording events in that country.

Because of the low registration threshold in Italy all the musicians and engineers are registered for Italian VAT (IVA) and most of them insist on charging this to my client. We have given them details of our client’s UK VAT number but they insist that they must charge IVA because the recording is taking place in Italy. Are they correct? Our client is also being charged IVA on the hire of the recording studio and hotel accommodation which we suspect is the proper thing to do but is it?

Query 19 094– Mario.

Reply by Marie Stein  www.vatexchange.co.uk