The Upper Tribunal has handed down judgment in St Patrick’s International College Limited & Ors v HMRC [2025] UKUT 101 (TCC), in which Laura Inglis appeared successfully for HMRC. The decision addresses the scope of the UK’s VAT exemption for higher education, contained in Group 6 of Schedule 9 to VATA 1994.
The Appellants are private college providing higher education in the UK, who were denied exemption under Group 6 on the basis that they did not qualify as “eligible bodies” – in short, because they were not UK universities, colleges of such universities, or further education colleges. The Appellants maintained inter alia that they were entitled to exemption, as a matter of directly effective EU law, on the basis that their supplies of education were indistinguishable from supplies by organisations that did benefit from exemption, such that denying them exemption breached the fundamental principle of fiscal neutrality. They argued that the comparability of supplies must be judged solely from the perspective of the typical consumer (to whom any differences in regulatory requirements would make no difference).
The Upper Tribunal affirmed the judgment of the FTT, which had decided in favour of HMRC on all issues. On the fiscal neutrality argument, the UT agreed with the FTT that, because the relevant EU law provision contains a supplier condition, the UK was entitled to distinguish between suppliers based on the regulatory regimes to which they were subject. The UT upheld the FTT’s findings that the regulatory regime for universities and colleges of universities was more stringent than that applying to the Appellants and that, where there is a supplier condition, the comparability of supplies need not be judged from the perspective of the typical consumer. The judgment also illustrates the UT’s willingness to derive assistance from post-Brexit CJEU authorities, despite not being bound by them.
Laura Inglis appeared for HMRC, led by Raymond Hill.
