Option to tax changes from 1 February

Published: 16th January 2023

By making an option to tax, a business can charge VAT (and therefore recover input VAT) on the sale or letting of land or non-residential property when the supply would otherwise be exempt. HMRC has issued a brief describing the changes to processing option to tax forms which take effect from 1 February 2023. From this date it will no longer issue an acknowledgement letter for the notifications it receives. This could lead to problems later on if HMRC claims not to have received your option to tax notification. However, if you submit the notification via email to optiontotaxnationalunit@hmrc.gov.uk, you will receive an automated response which will show the date the notification was submitted. Notifications sent any other way, e.g. by letter, are still valid but will not be acknowledged by HMRC. It’s hoped that by scrapping the acknowledgement letters, HMRC will be more efficient in this area.