Although a value-added tax is just another form of a retail sales tax, a VAT has the advantage of being harder to evade.
Variable Angle Tow (VAT) structures exploits this advantage by adopting a curvilinear patterns for the fibers constituting the lamina.
Finally, the mechanism of taking advantages of VAT laminates to improve the buckling performance of delaminated composite plates is thoroughly investigated in a parametric study.
The advantage of cutting VAT is that it can be done immediately.
What London Metropolitan University will no doubt seek to do is to create a separate subsidiary company, taking advantage of recent VAT changes, to offer services such as IT, library facilities, student services, registry, careers, counselling, human resources, accounting and marketing to other universities.
"If there is some kind of contrived scheme or vehicle, ie it's obvious that the purpose of the scheme is to avoid paying VAT and it's taking advantage of a loophole and we consider that tax is actually owed on the scheme, rather than just being a case of sensible tax planning … we can make the judgment that this is not legitimate tax planning.
"From a tax management perspective there may have been advantages in avoiding the UK 26% tax rate but the process and IT overhead with the additional VAT complexity may negate these advantages.
Last week, it was revealed by the Guardian that London Metropolitan University is "to outsource most services to a private firm" in a contract reputedly valued at £75m and no doubt taking advantage of the new VAT provisions to promote shared services among universities.
I have today written to the European Commission asking for a derogation so that over 1m businesses with turnovers, not at the current 660,000, but at £1.35m or less will be able to take advantage of more flexible VAT payment options to suit their business needs.
VAT rate hikes will boost VAT evasion.
