Readers’ forum: VAT on eating disorder services for non-UK customers

VAT on fees

My client provides a treatment therapy service to private individuals with eating disorders. Much of her work is carried out by zoom sessions and she has both UK and non-UK customers. The customers outside the UK are both EU and non-EU.

I have always told her to charge VAT on all of her fees but a colleague thinks that the recent Upper Tribunal case of Gray and Farrar v CRC [2022] STC 94 about matchmaking services means that she could probably ‘get away’ with not charging VAT on the fees to her non-EU clients and possibly EU clients as well. All of her sales are B2C; there are no business customers.

Could readers throw some light on the Gray and Farrar case? I can’t see why the services of a dating agency are similar to what my client does for her clients.

Finally if she has...