Section 56 Zero-rating of Goods and Services

Revenue eBrief No. 244/20

Section 56 Zero-rating of Goods and Services

Tax and Duty manual – Section 56 Zero-rating of Goods and Services – has been updated to reflect legislative changes to Section 56 of the Value-Added Tax Consolidation Act 2010, arising from the Withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union (Consequential Provisions) Act 2020, which will come into effect on 1 January 2021.

Extract:

Introduction
Section 56 of the Value-Added Tax Consolidation Act 2010 provides for a supplier to zero rate the supply of qualifying goods and services to certain authorised persons. It also provides that those authorised persons can apply the zero rate of tax to the acquisition of goods and services received from other Member states, where obliged to account for VAT on the receipt of those supplies, and on the importation of goods from outside the European Union.

In general, the accountable persons who qualify are those primarily engaged in making zero-rated intra-Community supplies of goods, in making zero rated exports of goods outside the European Union (referred to as ‘exports’ in this document) and in making supplies of certain contract work, so that the VAT on those supplies, if any, would be payable outside the State. Such persons would not normally be in a VAT payable position in the State in any given VAT period.