VAT error on my mobile phone bill

wiccanlou

Because my phone bill came out after the VAT increase I was charged at the new 20% rate when in fact i should have been charged 17.5% up to 23.59pm of the 3rd of january and then 20% there after.

I contacted my provider and was given £5 credit for my next bill by way of an apology for their error.

Everyone should check their bills and not just their mobile one as you could be paying out more than you should :eek:

Techhead_2

It's not an error as such. They are allowed to charge VAT at the rate applying when the bill was calculated rather than when the service was used.

Having said that, most of the phone companies have applied the rate when the service was uSed. I think its 'fairer' to do it that way. I'm led to believe those companies who haven't did so because their billingham systems cant cope with two VAT rates (as a change is rare)

Flyboy152

wiccanlou wrote: »

Because my phone bill came out after the VAT increase I was charged at the new 20% rate when in fact i should have been charged 17.5% up to 23.59pm of the 3rd of january and then 20% there after.

I contacted my provider and was given £5 credit for my next bill by way of an apology for their error.

Everyone should check their bills and not just their mobile one as you could be paying out more than you should :eek:

You could ask your provider to re-calculate your bill, but it is unlikely they will.

NFH

It was not an error. According to HMRC guidelines (section 3.4.1), VAT is correctly charged at 20% on the whole invoice based on the invoice date. The same thing happened when VAT was reduced from 17.5% to 15%, but nobody complained then. However the mobile networks could, if they wanted to, save their customers the increased VAT on the portion of their bills for services provided before 4th January 2011. By choosing to charge VAT at 20% rather than 17.5% on services provided before 4th January 2011, the mobile networks are not gaining for themselves but they are costing customers more money and giving more money to HMRC. Nevertheless it's good that your network reimbursed you; although they could have reimbursed you the actual VAT at no cost to themselves, given that the credit was a round number of £5, it sounds more like a goodwill credit out of their own funds.

xbrenx

You will also find that most shops added the extra VAT well before 4th January