In Intelligent Managed Services Limited v HMRC (TC03119 – 13 December 2013) the issue was whether the transfer of a business to a member of a VAT group could be a TOGC (transfer as a going concern outside the scope of VAT) where the transferee was to make supplies only to another member of the group.
The tribunal accepted that the transferee intended to operate the business it acquired and that therefore but for the effect of the VAT group provisions there would have been a TOGC.
However it insisted that VATA s43 and (inter alia) the decision of the House of Lords in C&E Commrs v Thorn Materials Supply Ltd and another [1998] STC 725 made it clear that the purpose of VATA 1994 s 43 is to ‘enable a group to be treated as if it were a single taxable entity ...