Value Added Tax Act 1994 section 24

Agents

Section 24 of Schedule 9ZA deals with the VAT treatment of goods acquired from an EU member state where a VAT-registered agent acts on behalf of a non-VAT-registered person, buying and then selling goods in the agent's own name.

• Where a non-taxable person acquires goods from a member state and a taxable person acts as their agent, handling the acquisition and reselling the goods in the agent's own name, the goods are treated as acquired and supplied by the agent as principal for VAT purposes.
• This means the VAT-registered agent becomes responsible for accounting for VAT on both the acquisition and the onward supply, rather than the non-registered person.
• Section 47 of the Act, which sets out the general rules for agents, is modified so that its provisions also take account of the agency rules in paragraph 24(1) of Schedule 9ZA.
• These modifications ensure that the undisclosed agency treatment applies consistently whether the transaction arises under the general agency rules or specifically under the acquisition-from-a-member-state rules.