Do all venues add on VAT ?

I believe as long as they are making more than £67000ish they have to charge for venue hire as they are offering a service, wedding co-ordinator, staff, etc...

Almost certainly they will be adding VAT and forthose who book in the New Year it'll be 20% instead of 17.5% which could make quite a difference!

If you can get away with this good luck. They are misinterpreting VAT regs. (assuming that they have business above a certain level) They are responsible for the misinterpretation.....get your full price quote in writing to avoid paying VAT when they realise their error.

Edited to add......is the venue a charitable or church hall type venue?......That could possibly make a difference to the VAT situation.

Churches and charitys now have to pay a level of vat I believe this is why you have to sign a gift aid thing when giving money.

Rent I dont believe is vatable so the only way i can think of it is that the service and venue are split so there would be 2 contracts, 1 purley for the rent of the venue and a 2nd which is for the service. Which if the Tax man were to do an inspection would very quickly put a stop too.

Sara - make sure you get a written contract. Whether they charge VAT or not depends on whether they are registered for VAT.

My company is, for example, so every invoice I send includes VAT, which will be going up in the new year.

The current VAT threshold is £70,000, so any business turning over VAT-able supplies over this amount will have to be VAT registered and charge VAT on all suplier eligible for VAT.

As far as I know a wedding venue should always be paying VAT and so should always be charging customers VAT too. Even a charity will find the same supplying the service is not a part of the charitable activities of the entity and so will attract an element of VAT by some complicated partial exemption scheme (as far as I've always seen).

I would be very suspicious of a venue not charging VAT and would want to make sure they are not in breech of these regulations, HMRC have huge powers and if they found that the venue should have been, but hasn't been paying VAT then they could land the venue with a huge bill and fines which may threaten their finances or even force them to go bust in some cases. And that would be bad!!

I'm not saying this is the case here, nor that the venue is doing anything dodgy, but i'd just take some time to understand it before / if you did book them.