In September, Sarabjit Singh represented the United Kingdom at the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg in a case concerning the cultural exemption from VAT. The case was set to have ramifications across the European Union.

The CJEU has now given judgment and agreed with all of Sarabjit’s arguments on behalf of the UK. This means that the UK and all other Member States will be permitted to choose which cultural services to treat as exempt from VAT, as many do already, and will not be obliged to exempt any service that could be deemed to be ‘cultural’ somewhere on European territory (such as bullfighting).

This ruling gives the UK the green light to continue to treat certain cultural services such as theatre admissions as exempt whilst declining to extend that exemption across the board to all cultural services.

Please see judgement here.