Readers’ forum: Can VAT registration date be amended by HMRC?

I read with interest the recent VAT article written by Neil Warren ‘Number games’ (Taxation 5 May 2022 page 22). This article alerted me to a backdated registration problem for one of my builder clients.

The situation was the same as with Neil’s example namely HMRC wrote to my client about him not being VAT registered despite the fact that his self-assessment tax returns showed annual sales exceeding £85 000. We agreed with HMRC that the registration should be backdated by two years.

However having read Neil’s article I now realise that we should have excluded some income from the registration test in relation to building work my client carried out in Dubai. This income is outside the scope of UK VAT. If this income is excluded the date of registration would be 1 October 2021 rather than 1 February 2020.

My...