Business delivers the academic works

The taxpayer lost First-tier Tribunal and Upper Tribunal decisions in 2018 and 2020 about whether it was supplying completed essays dissertations and pieces of written coursework to customers or whether the self-employed writers who were given the task of writing the work by AA made the supply. The company retained two-thirds of the fee paid by customers with the writers retaining one-third. The taxpayer argued in the earlier appeals that the writers were supplying services to the students and it provided an agency service to the writers. HMRC and both tribunals disagreed – the taxpayer was the principal rather than the agent.

The instant appeal focused on a revised contract between the taxpayer and the writers which the company claimed completely changed the legal relationship and also the commercial reality of the deal because the contract. The contract was updated to state that the writer...