Yachting and Boating World forums: Interesting Outcome

From BSAC News

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FUEL DUTY NEWS

A report by Mark Prior of Plymouth Sound Branch.

Our club has been investigating whether we qualified for repayment of Excise Duty on Mineral Oil on a Marine Voyage (fuel duty in English) and were told by Customs and Excise that we did indeed qualify. This is not a 'loophole'.

The crunch is that you cannot claim for private pleasure craft but our boats are used for safety, not pleasure. It is only the diving that is the pleasure bit (mostly!).

You can back date a claim up to three years.

As an example we run two Ribs and have claimed back £5,500 for the past three years fuel use. It will be worth around £1,500 a year to our club in future.

These claims have been processed without quibble and a Customs inspector has recently looked through our books and validated our claim.

Our boats use garage-bought unleaded and the duty is 47p per litre.

Many BS-AC clubs operate their own boats so it is very important that they are all made aware that this scheme exists. It has certainly helped to transform our finances.

Details are available on the HMRC website, www.hmrc.gov.uk eligibility is defined in Notice 263 and you can also download a reclaim form HO50.
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Not sure how they got away with that, but apparently they did and precedent has been set. Club rescue boats and so forth and "safety elements" of ferries that can rescue people who fell in off the end of the pontoon etc.

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Two beers please, my friend is paying.