News & Updates

All Businesses

Under new Legislation all businesses including public sector bodies are being asked to retain petrol receipts for employees who are paid a mileage allowance to enable them to continue to recover their input tax. Failure to do so may result in increased costs through irrecoverable VAT.

Land and property

Consultation period over land and property rules including changes to the option to tax rules and the revocation of the option.

Popular Quotes

Beyond the everyday world, both counsel have explained to us, lies the world of VAT, a kind of fiscal theme park in which factual and legal realities are suspended or inverted.
Smedley LJ

No man in this country is under the smallest obligation, moral or other, so to arrange his legal relations to his business or to his property as to enable the Inland Revenue to put the largest shovel into his stores.

..The Inland Revenue is not slow – and quite rightly – to take every advantage which is open to it under the taxing statutes for the purpose of depleting the taxpayer’s pocket.  And the taxpayer is, in like manner, entitled to be astute to prevent, so far as he honestly can, the depletion of his means by the Revenue.
Lord President (Clyde)

Customs & Excise live off the vat of the land
Unknown

Nothing in life is certain except death and taxes
Benjamin Franklin

Not one cent should be raised unless it is in accord with the law.
Napoleon Bonaparte

Anyone may arrange his affairs so that his taxes shall be as low as possible; he is not bound to choose that pattern which best pays the treasury. There is not even a patriotic duty to increase one's taxes. Over and over again the Courts have said that there is nothing sinister in so arranging affairs as to keep taxes as low as possible. Everyone does it, rich and poor alike and all do right, for nobody owes any public duty to pay more than the law demands.
Helvering v Gregory, US Court of Appeal

Welcome

At Elysian Associates, we have been providing comprehensive advice on indirect taxes to public sector bodies and businesses for several years and have now become established as one of the leading local authority and education sector advisory firms. Our client base includes numerous local authorities including County Councils, City Councils and unitary authorities and some of the largest universities in the UK.

Working from offices in East Anglia and the Midlands, we provide advice to bodies across England and Wales, from Devon to Durham and from Norfolk to North Wales.

Our consultants have all worked in two or more of the "Big 4" firms and have VAT careers going back to the 1980s.

Every year since 2001 we have saved local authorities, educational establishments, social housing providers and small businesses millions of pounds in overpaid VAT.

To contact us, please click here