Holiday blog, September 2010

15 September 2010

Here we are on the train to Brussels on the second stage of our journey to Hamburg for a week's holiday. Sadly there's a good chance our holiday is over when you are reading this as connecting to the Internet will be kept to a minimum.

Why is this the second stage of the journey? Because the first stage was the trip from home to St Pancras International to catch the Eurostar train. We left home at six o'clock and left behind a puzzled cat, Pooh, who will no doubt spend the day in the garden looking huffy and waiting for another cat to pick a fight with. That or he'll catch an innocent bird to vent his frustration. And for an eighteen year old cat that's some feat! I'd love to include a photo of him in this blog but most of the pictures of him shoe no detail as he's black, so no much detail shows up in the photo.

And now we're on stage three of our trip today: from Brussels to Köln. As I write this we've just left Liege. Next stop Aachen. The weather's brilliant, but that's easy to say sitting on an air-conditioned train! This is just the sort of weather we want for our holiday: dry, bright and preferably not very windy.

Whilst we were waiting at Brussels we listened to the announcer who had to repeat most announcements three times in three different languages. The speed with which she did this left her sounding as though she was out of breath. I wonder: was she on a bonus for finishing all the announcements in record time?

We noticed at Brussels that not all trains on the Continent run to time. The departure board showed at least one train that was 45 minutes late and the train to Paris was gradually getting later and later. Fortunately the train to Cologne was running to time!

We've left Aachen. The next stop is Köln where we change trains again for the final leg to Hamburg.

So, here we are in Köln waiting for the last train on our journey today. Having a little time in hand we had a bite to eat at a ... Pizza Hut!

Now back to my earlier comments about the smooth running of trains on the Continent: it's a myth! As we were approaching Köln there was an announcement that our train, which was supposed to go on to Frankfurt was terminating at Köln, and would be returning to Brussels. No reason was given. The train was apparently working fine. There must have been a reason that the controllers decided to take the action they did. Who cares? It hasn't affected our journey! (Does that seem a little callous? Sorry, that's how I'm feeling just now :-) )

Arrived in Hamburg at around 19:30 and found the hotel very easily. It is only about 150 metres from the station! To get to our room was the usual long trek through a rabbit warren of corridors, and as far away from the lift as possible. This seems to be usual for our stays in hotels. In this case it was worth it as there were quite good views out over the city.

16 September 2010

First real day of the holiday. Breakfast in the hotel was great! A really good selection of hot and cold foods. We ate well.

Next thing on our list was a walk into the city before meeting up with Claus and Christina at around 12:00. We visited a couple of shops to have a look at shirts - I hadn't taken enough, deliberately. Unfortunately all the great colours were in the slim fit style which I think is not a good choice for me. I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions.

Met up with Claus and Christina and went off to see the 'Miniatur Wunderland' with a whole series of model scenes of various places. See the photos for some idea of what was on display. It certainly seemed to attract a lot of visitors. It was fascinating to see the attention to detail that the model makers had put into the displays, although there seemed to be a morbid fascination with car crashes and fires!

After spending quite a while looking at the models we went for a walk around part of the newly modernised area of the port where the warehouses have been converted into apartments and offices or new buildings have been built to replace those that could not bee reused. We eventually made our way into the city centre and found a place to have a belated lunch before heading for 'home'.

The weather has been kind to us today, albeit rather windy. The forecast for the next few days appears to be more of the same: sunshine and showers. Here's hoping that it will be more sunshine than showers!

17 September 2010

 

Today, it rained -- but not for long!

We went to the Welt Vogelpark, Wolsbade. An incredible place with many birds from around the world of which I hadn't heard. We spent several hours looking around. A place worth visiting with extensive grounds and a lot of well looked after birds on display.

18 September 2010

Not such an action packed day as the weather was against us. We went out to do some shopping, returned home for lunch and had intended to go out for a walk. The fast approaching black clouds put us off. It seemed better to stay in and keep dry!

19 September 2010

Christopher, Eva and Theo came for a Brunch today. Theo has grown and has found his voice - what a chatterbox he is! He soon lost his shyness and was happily playing with his toys soon after Brunch was over. The rest of us sat and chatted for the rest of their visit. All too soon we were waving them off.

As the weather was better than expected we went to a Flohmarkt and later for a walk around a nearby lake. As it was rather a large lake we only walked part way round and retraced our steps. We had some tea when we got home.

Karen and Christina went out to the DVD rental shop in the village and came back with a film for us to watch this evening.

20 September 2010

The wettest day of our holiday so far. We spent most of the day pottering around Hamburg. In the evening we met up with Caroline and had a meal at a local Tapas bar. We enjoyed the evening, even if it was raining when we left that we got rather wet on the way back to the car park.

21 September 2010

The last day of our holiday and the weather is wonderful. We went to Friederichstadt. A pretty little town near the North Sea coast. The streets in the town centre are cobbled. There are canals around the town which appears to be on low lying land, so probably liable to flood. Boat trips on the canal had been cancelled because of the high water level.

After lunch we went to Husum, a small port a few kilometres away from Friedrichstadt. This was pretty with a harbour almost in the town centre. We walked around the town centre through narrow lanes and returned to the waterside where we had left the car.

The sun shone most of the time today, making it possibly the best day of our holiday.

We return home tomorrow. :-(

22 September 2010

We're on our way home :-( We've had a lovely week away from work and are again testing the German trains as we travel back to the UK. We're on the first leg from Hamburg to Köln. The train was a little late leaving Hamburg, but we have plenty of time to make our connections. We'll be home about 20:30 this evening. 

Fun and games! We arrived at Dortmund on time, and about the time we were supposed to leave it was announced that the train was being diverted. Lots of passengers travelling to the stations we will no longer be stopping at were jumping up, grabbing their bags, and getting off the train to get connecting services to their stations. We're now travelling along the route that we travelled on the way to Hamburg.

Well, we got to Köln a little later than scheduled but with plenty of time to get a drink and food without any visible signs of panic! Got on the train and found our seats. Seems most of the passengers in this carriage are English. This does not apply to the little man from North America who was upset, and proclaimed it loudly, at being turfed out of his seat as someone else had the reservation for it.

Next stop Bruxel.

We're feeling right at home on the Continental trains. We arrived in Bruxelles ten minutes late - just like a train at home! We're now sitting on the Eurostar waiting to depart at just before 18:00 local time. Time to put our watches to BST.

An easy journey from Brussels, arriving on time at St Pancras. After the long walk through to Customs, and out to the station concourse, there was just enough time to get a newspaper, buy our tickets and get to the platform with just enough time to get on the train. Home just after 8:30pm and a warm welcome from the cat!

Thank yous

First, thank you to Claus & Christina for hosting our stay and making sure we had a fantastic time.

Second, thank you to Steve Ody at Citrus Travel for organising the travel and hotel stay for us, and making it all work like clockwork.

Finally, thank you for reading, if you have been :-)

See the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from Karen & Robert Killington

Registration Limits for UK VAT from 1 April 2010

The VAT registration limits changed on 1 April 2010. If you want to know what the VAT registration limits are in the UK you can find them on my blog.

Posted via email from VATark: The Fun VAT Man

Sponsorship - can it be zero-rated as charity advertising?

I had a 'phone call recently from a charitable organisation that was intending to give another charitable body a grant with which to buy vehicles. The intention of the grant giving organisation was to require the recipient to put certain logos on the vehicles to indicate that they had been funded by the organisations providing the money. By putting this requirement into the contract with the recipient organisation there seemed to be a danger that this could make the transaction liable to VAT. That VAT would have to be charged by the recipient but would be unrecoverable by the giver - so either the recipient lost out by about 15% or the donor had to find another 17.5% to fund the VAT. Neither answer was particularly good.

In this instance the advice given was simply to remove the clause that imposed an obligation on the recipient to do anything in return for the grant. Most recipients would be happy to make it clear who had provided the funds for the purchase of the goods, in this case vehicles, without it being obliged to do so.

One of the potential recipients of the grant then contacted me to discuss whether the grant would, if the obligation to put the logos on the vehicles was retained, be zero-rated as paying for the supply of advertising to a charity.

Criteria for zero-rating

There are a number of criteria that have to be met for charity advertising to be zero-rated. H M Revenue & Customs (HMRC) set out these criteria in the VAT Notice 700/58. In summary, the criteria are:

• The advertisement has to appear in a medium that is available to the 'public'
• The advertisement has to occupy someone else's space or time, i.e. the advert cannot be on the charity's own web site, magazine, etc.

Advertisements can appear on any medium from billboards to newspapers, beer mats to sides of vehicles, and will qualify for zero-rating provided the space or time used belongs to someone other than the charity, i.e. the charity has to pay for the space or time being used for the advertising.

Those are the criteria for advertising on its own, not part of what is more often referred to as sponsorship.

What is sponsorship?

Good question, I'm glad you asked...

Sponsorship is when one person agrees to support another either by giving goods, services and/or money. If the sponsor obliges the recipient to do something in return, e.g. name an event after the sponsor, or show the sponsor's logo on event materials, there is a supply of services by the recipient to the sponsor. This supply is generally a taxable supply, liable to VAT at the standard rate (17.5%) for supplies within the UK. A different VAT treatment might apply if the supply is to a charity outside the UK.

Whether sponsorship can be a single supply of advertising will depend on the terms of the agreement between the parties involved. If the agreement, for example, only requires that the sponsor's logo appears prominently on relevant event notices, leaflets, advertising, etc. then there is possibly just a single supply of advertising.

So, can advertising by a charity be zero-rated as part of a sponsorship deal?

Possibly. It depends on the facts of the situation. HMRC might argue that just using a logo in this case was insufficient for it to be clear who was doing the advertising. Whilst it would be possible to successfully challenge HMRC's argument the costs involved might make that action commercially unsound.

In this case I thought it was too risky for the donor organisation to have a clause obliging the recipients to put the logos on the vehicles. The risk was that the recipient might have to charge VAT at the standard rate and that would mean either the donor had to find the extra money or the recipient in effect had less to spend.

The best thing to do? Seek professional advice. Give the adviser the full facts. Yes. All of them; leave nothing out. That will protect you from penalties for not taking reasonable care.

Got a view on this? I'd love to hear your views - leave a comment.

Posted via email from VATark: The Fun VAT Man

Paying VAT by cheque? You'll need to get the cheque in much earlier...

HMRC has announced that from 1 April 2010 it will be treating payments made by cheque for VAT as received on the date cleared funds reach its bank account.

This is a significant change and one of which businesses need to take account. From 1 April 2010 if you send in your VAT return and payment to arrive by the due date the payment will be late because it will clear on a date after receipt. This will leave your business liable to a late payment penalty. Currently late payment surcharges are on a sliding scale from 2% to 15% - be late paying at your peril.

After 1 April 2010 you will need to make sure you send your payment to HMRC so that they have sufficient time to present the cheque and for the funds to clear by the due date. This is effectively reducing the time available for preparing and submitting VAT returns and payments by as much as seven days.

Submit and pay electronically

You can avoid this difficulty by moving to submitting your returns online, which will require you to pay your VAT electronically. If you choose to pay by direct debit, not only do you get an addition seven days to submit your VAT return you also get a further three days before HMRC take the money from your bank account.

Comment

This change by HMRC is probably to help cash flow and generate additional revenue from increased penalties. HMRC still require businesses using the, for example, Cash Accounting Scheme or the cash basis of the Flat Rate Scheme for Small Businesses to account for VAT on cheques on the day they are received.

This appears to be yet another attempt by HMRC to put more businesses into the penalty régime by moving the goal posts, whilst requiring the businesses to account for VAT on a less beneficial, for the business, way.

What are your views? I'd love to read your thoughts on this - please leave a comment.

Posted via email from VATark: The Fun VAT Man

Time limits for keeping VAT records

A little while ago I put out a note about new time limits that HMRC have introduced for how far back it and taxpayers can go when correcting errors, and highlighted the good and the bad points. You can find the post on my website.

After that post, I was asked if that meant that the time limits for keeping records had been reduced from six years. I was unable to answer that question then, but HMRC has again come to my rescue by issuing some guidance on how long papers need to be kept. The bad news is that nothing in their guidance has really changed.

You can download the HMRC guidance from its website. For more specific guidance on VAT you can find it on HMRC's website here.

What do you think? Given that for direct tax the time limits have been reduced, and for VAT they've been increased, should the time one has to keep records for be brought into line with the new rules?

Posted via email from VATark: The Fun VAT Man

Snow in Crawley

Some photos I took on Wednesday while I was out walking in the snow.

See the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from Karen & Robert Killington

VAT Fuel Scale Charge - what to do after 1 January 2010

After yesterday's post about the Flat Rate Scheme for small business rates that apply from 1 January 2010 I thought I'd remind you about the change to the Fuel Scale Charge. I've prepared a table showing the new amounts to apply now that the VAT rate has increased to 17.5%.

If you apply the Fuel Scale Charge for private motoring you need to remember to apply the correct rate for months after 31 December 2009. If your VAT period spans the change in rate, those months that come after the change will need to pro-rate your fuel scale charge for that VAT period.

Posted via email from VATark: The Fun VAT Man