Truth Recruitment Limited v The Commissioners for HMRC
Decision date: 16 December 2025
Neutral citation: [2025] UKFTT 1604 (TC)
Overall AI summary confidence: high
Short overview
This short overview is intended to summarise the case, issues and outcome so far as they are supported by the judgment.
AI confidence in this short overview: high
This appeal concerned a s73 VAT assessment by HMRC denying most of Truth Recruitment Limited's input tax claim for July 2022; the Tribunal found the appellant's supplies of carers to three care homes were not exempt under s31/Group 7 Part 2 Schedule 9 VATA and dismissed the appeal. The Tribunal held the carers were not on the professional registers in Item 1 and their services were not wholly performed or directly supervised by registered persons, and it rejected the appellant's procedural and fairness challenges. Quantum was not in dispute and the assessment was held to have been validly issued.
Ratio decidendi
This summary is intended to identify the ratio decidendi, meaning the legal reasons for deciding and the binding part of the decision.
AI confidence in this ratio decidendi summary: high
The Tribunal's decision rests on the finding that, where suppliers are not registered/enrolled on the registers identified in Item 1 and their services are not wholly performed or directly supervised by such registered persons (per Note 2), those supplies do not fall within the Item 1 exemption; additionally, the VAT treatment of the recipient or of other suppliers to the same recipient does not determine whether a particular supplier's supplies are exempt.
Obiter dicta
This summary is intended to identify obiter dicta, meaning observations made by the way that were not necessary to deciding the case and are not binding.
AI confidence in this obiter dicta summary: medium
The Tribunal observed that allegations an assessment is "unfair or irrational" require objective evidence to impugn HMRC's exercise of judgment or to sustain a public law challenge, and that commercial disputes between supplier and customer or the tenor of telephone communications are not material to whether supplies are VAT-exempt. These remarks were treated as non-decisive commentary.
Warning
- The chunk contains substantial repetition and duplicated text, which made extraction of a single coherent narrative more difficult. The notes contain substantial repetition and some duplicated text, which may mean the judgment is noisy or incomplete.