Real Client Story
How we sorted a Sydenham cafe owner's VAT and saved £5,200
Client D runs a cafe and deli on Sydenham Road, selling eat-in meals and hot drinks, hot takeaway, and cold packaged deli goods and ingredients to take home. Having registered for standard VAT, they were applying 20% across the board and overpaying on the zero-rated cold deli goods and ingredients.
We reviewed the sales mix. Eat-in food, hot drinks and hot takeaway are standard-rated, but cold takeaway deli goods, cheeses, bread and packaged ingredients are zero-rated. We set up the till to categorise sales correctly, reviewed the product range against HMRC's food VAT rules, and corrected the recent returns to reclaim the overpaid VAT on the zero-rated lines.
Total outcome: VAT saving of £5,200 a year by correctly separating standard-rated and zero-rated sales, a reclaim of overpaid VAT from recent returns, and the till set up to handle the split automatically going forward.