It is an important time of year around May Day; winter is over, summer is about to begin. The recent case of Abbey National v Customs and Excise in the European Court was delivered on 4 May and has brought in a further taste of VAT summer, as compared to the wintry past before it.
The reasonable person, thinking the focus of the European Union (EU) is to remove economic and fiscal obstacles to the structuring of business, might be surprised at the hard line the European Court of Justice has taken in some VAT outsourcing cases, such as Arthur Andersen, in which outsourced back office insurance services were ruled liable to VAT.
