I don’t get it. Does it have a different purpose in retail than it does business?
In business, if I sell you a service for £100 and have to add 20% VAT then that 20% gets paid to the government, though if I buy something for £120 (inc. VAT) I can reclaim that 20% back from the government anyway, so what was the point of money changing hands in the first place?
Is it not 1:1 transactions, on a large scale? I guess ideally people are selling more than they’re buying? Does the government end up in credit, and it’s a form of tax collection, the price of doing business? Then why make it that I can reclaim VAT back on purchases and not just keep the whole lot?
Asked my Book Keeper this who said it was a good question nobody’s ever asked before, and didn’t have an answer. “I’ve got the worst f**king lawyers”
In: 6
The neat thing about VAT vs a sales tax on the end consumer is that the government doesn’t have to work out who the end consumer is. Because the tax is paid at every step of the process, but only not reclaimed by the final consumer, that final consumer is automatically found.
Also businesses do all the accounting themselves which makes it a very cheap tax to collect.
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