Claiming
What records do you need to make an education VAT claim?
Short answer
You need to show what you taught, for whom, under which agreement, what VAT you accounted for and what input tax you recovered, for every VAT period in the claim from mid-2022 onwards. The core records are your agreements with universities and colleges, course documents, invoices and payment flows, VAT returns and your partial exemption workings. Pricing evidence helps answer HMRC on unjust enrichment.
About your organisation
- Legal name, trading names, Companies House number and UKPRN for each company that taught or invoiced the courses
- Teaching locations
- VAT registration certificate, date of registration and any VAT group
- Office for Students registration category, if any
- Constitution, including any restriction on distributing profits
Your agreements with universities and colleges
- Each franchise, subcontract, partnership or pathway agreement, with its schedules, for every academic year from 2022/23
- What each agreement says about who supplies the teaching to students and who collects the fees
- Validation and awarding arrangements, for example Pearson centre approval
- Course specifications and how students were registered
Your courses
- HNC, HND and English language courses for each year of the claim, with level, awarding body, partner institution and start and end dates
- Student numbers by course and intake
- How each group paid: themselves, through student finance, through a university or college, or through an employer
Fees and output tax
- VAT returns for every period in the claim, with box figures
- Invoices and fee schedules, to students and to partner institutions
- Payment flows: who paid whom, and how any fees a university collected were settled with you
- How fee income was coded for VAT in your finance system
- Refunds, discounts, bursaries and write-offs
Input tax
- Purchase ledger for every period in the claim
- Your partial exemption method and any special method agreed with HMRC
- Records of property purchases, builds or refurbishments above the Capital Goods Scheme thresholds
- How shared costs such as rent, IT and staff were allocated
History and pricing evidence
- Any earlier claims, error corrections and correspondence with HMRC about your VAT treatment
- Any refunds or credits already given to students or partner institutions
- Fee history, especially around when you started charging VAT
- Fees charged by universities and FE colleges for similar courses
- Board papers or notes showing how fees and contract prices were set
You do not need everything before your consultation. Our VAT specialist will tell you which records matter most for your claim. Book a free online consultation.