Value Added Tax Act 1994 section Schedule 9ZB paragraph 19

Northern Ireland fiscal warehouses: relief

Section Schedule 9ZB paragraph 19 provides VAT relief for eligible goods acquired from EU member states or supplied while subject to a Northern Ireland fiscal warehousing regime, and sets out the conditions and certification requirements for that relief.

• Eligible goods acquired from an EU member state or supplied while under a Northern Ireland fiscal warehousing regime can be treated as taking place outside the United Kingdom, effectively suspending the VAT charge, provided the goods remain within the regime and appropriate certificates are prepared and retained.
• If the goods are eventually removed from the Northern Ireland fiscal warehousing regime without being supplied onward within it, the acquisition or supply is treated as taking place in the United Kingdom at the point of removal, and VAT becomes chargeable at that time — even if the acquirer or supplier would not normally be a taxable person due to certain registration threshold exemptions.
• HMRC has the power to expand or restrict the list of goods eligible for fiscal warehousing by regulation, and can also make regulations allowing zero-rating where goods are removed from a Northern Ireland fiscal warehousing regime and placed directly into an equivalent warehousing regime in an EU member state.
• Certificates confirming that goods are subject to (or will be placed into) the fiscal warehousing regime must be prepared no later than the time of acquisition or supply, must follow a prescribed form, and must be kept for a period specified by HMRC in regulations.