VAT on Club Membership Fees?

[FreelanceSoftwareDeveloper]

I'm involved with the running of a large community sports club, it is CASC and a Ltd Company (By guarantee). We are VAT registered (turnover well above the VAT limit) but a chunk of our income comes from membership fees which we have to pay VAT on.

I was wondering if there is any way the fees could be VAT exempt? This income is close to £50k.

The fees are for private member benefits such as taking part in sporting activity sections but the club also rents out sporting and function room facilities to the public.

 

[Blackberry]

Hi Freelance

I'm the treasurer for a CASC and the membership fees are exempt from VAT.

if you have previosuly paid VAT on these subs in the past you should be able to reclaim the VAT wrongly paid for the last 4 years.

If you havent already done so, you should also register for gift aid as you claim gift aid on member subscriptions, giving your income a handy boost

VAT will be due on non member income usch as room hire and normal bar receipts will of course be subject to VAT

Your organisation should also get a mandatory 80% releif on business rates - not many people know this but if you register for the Club Mark scheme you'll get 100% rate relief

 

[FreelanceSoftwareDeveloper]

Thanks for your reply, very good news. We do have approximately 30% of the membership income as Social Members, would this need to be separated from the Playing Members?

I was just looking on HMRC and it uses wording along the lines of "members actively participating in sport".

We are looking at Clubmark and i'm sure we use Gift Aid where possible.

 

[Blackberry]

as long as the main purpose of the club is to provide sports faciltiies and that the majority of members are active then I believe that all member fees are VAt exempt.

if you had 90% social membership then this raises a different issue for example.

we have approx 10% social membership, but we do find that social members do participate in that they help with scoring, running competitions etc