Readers’ forum: Juicy question

Our client runs a blog about fruit juices and health drinks which has been very successful. His turnover now exceeds the VAT threshold and we registered the business for VAT from 1 February 2020.

Generally his commission is received two to three months in arrears so working on the cash basis we would expect his output for the first quarter to be relatively low. I am concerned that a lot of the income is outside the scope of UK VAT and I wonder whether we should therefore be restricting the input tax?

Most of the commission is from an advertising company in the US but he also receives commission from Google and Amazon as well as suppliers some of which are based in the UK. He also sells an e-book through Etsy Ireland. Finally he receives fees for ...