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Mecca Bingo who are part of the renowned Rank group have just announced that (HMRC) Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, will appeal the decision made by the VAT tribunal back in May that ruled in their favour and awarded them £36.3 million back in overpaid VAT Duties. The original claim was made by the Rank group back in 2006, but they did expect this appeal to be made by (HMRC) as they said back in May, that any benefit to their company, would be unlikely to be seen this year.
It now looks like Mecca Bingo will have a lot longer to wait to get any overpaid VAT back from (HMRC) as the expected high court appeal is not expected to take place until 2009, subsequently after this announcement which was made on Friday; Rank’s shares took another tumble. The law’s of the EU’s fiscal neutrality clearly states that any supplies of services that are the same or similar should not be treated differently for VAT purposes and this is in direct contravention to the VAT Paid by Mecca Bingo, as all their bingo halls were all charged VAT on their interval land based bingo games, that are more commonly known as Party Bingo.
The tribunal ruling back in May stated that, the application of VAT to interval bingo, which is played in outdoor shelters where players can smoke, was "in contravention to European Union laws on fiscal neutrality". A £36.3 million tax rebate is a hard pill to swallow by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, so to this end it is no wonder this expected appeal was made.
Mecca Bingo has numerous land based bingo halls situated throughout the UK and they have been lobbying the government in recent months due to the unfair double taxation placed in the bingo industry as a whole. The government recently announced a u turn on the amount of £500 jackpot gaming machines now allowed in bingo halls after previously making bingo halls remove them from their bingo clubs, this was an effort from the government to try and aid the bingo industry in their turbulent times, but if it is enough to make any real impact, still remains to be seen.
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