In Astral Marine Services v HMRC (TC03408 – 19 March 2014) Astral operated casinos and gaming machines on P&O ferries under a licence agreement. The FTT found that the casinos constituted ‘fixed establishments’ which therefore were outside the scope of UK VAT whereas the gaming machines did not and so were within the scope of UK VAT.
It was accepted that the supplies of casinos and gaming machines were not ancillary to each other. Therefore applying Middle Temple ([2013] UKUT 0250) and Levob (C-41/04) the question was whether the two supplies were so closely connected that they formed an ‘indivisible economic supply’ ‘from the view point of a typical consumer’.
The tribunal noted that the facts that some routes only had gaming machines and that the facilities were maintained in a different way by different personnel suggested that they could be supplied separately....
