Reclaiming VAT on exported goods (Sail)

[macd]

Birdseye: yes, much of the law is contradictory. A sovereign state inevitably wants to claim as much as possible as its own; equally, your sovereign state (and many others) are happy to cop out from having, say, responsibility for your medical treatment (whilst simoultaineously and gleefully accepting your taxes).

But the sovereignty of a vessel is irrelevant. The bottom line is that a boat never bought so much as a Mars bar, ever. And, as Tranona pointed out*, VAT is a tax on 'events', not things.

* If not this time, at least on a thousand others, and with good reason.

 

[Tranona]

This is the issue I was wondering about. On the high seas, a patrol boat from say the USA has to get the permission of the british government to board a british flagged vessel (which the UK govt being a client state automatically gives). But this situation arises because the legal jurisdiction belongs to the flag state of the vessel. You murder your wife on board your boat and its the UK criminal court you end up in eventually. To my mind it follows from this that the sails are being delivered via Turkey to a small floating piece of the UK, your boat. They arent being exported as they would be if they were being supplied from the UK to a Turkish vessel.


Might be different with VAT - there is no requirement for the law to be consistent

There is a basic misunderstanding here of what a "British registered" boat is. It is definitely not a bit of "British territory". In fact it does not exist as a legal entity at all but is just a chattel. The only thing "British" about it is in relation to the law that covers its equipment and manning - and even once outside UK waters other jurisdictions can override that. Thankfully most other territories abide by the principle of comity and respect the UK law - which of course for small leisure boats actually prescribes virtually nothing.

But all of this is irrelevant as most law and taxes are related either to individual people and to goods, services or events (as in the case of VAT). So the tax on goods exported to Turkey are subject to import rules for that country irrespective of who is receiving them in the country.

The two issues here are whether the supplier is prepared to do the paperwork to export the goods free of UK VAT and then whether it is possible for the recipient to import them into Turkey without paying any taxes there. Plenty of examples to confirm that both of these are possible, but may not be worth it for the relatively small saving on this particular transaction - more from the hassle factor in Turkey.