21 October 2014 
Amanda Darley, Head of Operations and Engagement
The Upper Tribunal has reversed the decision of the First-tier Tribunal in the University of Huddersfield’s case which began in the VAT and Duties Tribunal in 2002, had questions referred to the Court of Justice of the European Union, returned to the First-tier Tribunal and was then appealed by HMRC.
Despite such a heady journey, the case doesn’t provide much insight into how to run a university’s VAT affairs in 2014, having started life as an arrangement providing tax mitigation when it was entered into almost twenty years ago in 1995, when the general higher education tax landscape was vastly different from today, and much more aggressive. The decision is essentially about a lease and leaseback arrangement involving a separate trust. The case will be of interest to those in sectors still pushing the boundaries of what is/isn’t avoidance and what is/isn’t acceptable, as it deals with the general principles of abuse of right, but, generally speaking, the university sector does not nudge those boundaries anymore, and in fact the arrangement under review in the Huddersfield case has not been in operation for a decade, despite the case still rumbling through the courts now.
