Readers’ forum: Has grazing rights income caused a late registration?

After a casual conversation with a colleague in the pub I am worried that I might have misled a client about VAT registration. The client is a trust and rents out eighteen residential properties on a buy-to-let basis and also some agricultural land to a farmer. This income is exempt from VAT and the trust has never registered for VAT.

In 2018 one of the properties was refurbished and has been rented out as a holiday let through the Airbnb website. This income is VATable but less than £85 000 a year so below the registration threshold. The problem is that the land rented to the farmer might be zero rated because it relates to grazing rights – the farmer pays for the right to keep his sheep on the land. This view was raised by my colleague in the pub and seems to be supported by...