Readers’ forum: Can partial exemption windfall be reclaimed?

I recently read Neil Warren’s article about partial exemption (Taxation 11 August 2022) and wonder if my client is entitled to an input tax windfall.

The situation is that my client posted many March 2021 purchases invoices into her purchase ledger for April 2021. The client is not on the cash accounting scheme so claims input tax according to invoice rather than payment date. All of the invoices related to residual input tax mainly overhead costs or premises expenses so only part of the VAT is claimed with partial exemption.

My client did not treat the late entries in April as a VAT error – even though the total VAT exceeded the disclosure limit of £10 000 – because they had been delayed due to the budget holder being sick with Covid rather than any accounting error.

But here is the problem: because of a major...