Taxidermy: Getting under the skin of a tax lawyer

I was stunned when I read the opening words of Advocate General Bobek’s Opinion in Cussens.

When I revamped my website I was persuaded that it would a good idea to invite the tax-confused to contact me with their questions.  There’s a lot of them out there.  No wonder, if you ask me.

This blog has nothing to do with Christmas.  I don’t have a Christmas tree this year (first time ever) and so am not in festive mood.  If you are looking for Christmas cheer, look elsewhere.  Instead I am going to talk to you about VAT.

My friend Tracey loves bridge.  She wanted me to learn. Although I was brought up to think of card games as the work of the devil, what Tracey wants, Tracey gets, so over a frosty weekend in January this year I found myself at the Andrew Robson Bridge School …

Until I was ten I wanted to be a vet.  My best friend Ingrid’s dad was one.  Ingrid and I used to peer through the window and watch him doing operations.  I remember finding a frog with a swollen leg on my way back from my music lesson and taking it to Ingrid’s dad for a diagnosis…

My book on VAT and property, published on Friday 13 February, was, like all legal commentaries, out-of-date before it even saw the light of day.  Writing the book was like running after a bus that was always pulling away just as you arrived at the stop.  A series of tax groundhog moments, if you like.

‘I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.’ (Douglas Adams, ‘The Salmon of Doubt’)

In a moment of weakness I did a very stupid thing – I agreed to write a book on VAT and property transactions.

In June 2013, the EU VAT Forum, set up by the Commission in July 2012 to bring together VAT authorities and business, launched the VAT cross-border rulings (‘CBR’) pilot project.