Jay Cooke

The companies may be in a corporate group but VAT purposes, you have to treat as if they are individual companies and nothing to do with each other. So driver theory tests, MOT fees and similar costs incurred in Company A and recharged to Company B are recharged plus VAT. Both the driver test and MOT will not have any input tax charged on them as these supplies are from statutory bodies and their fees are not subject to VAT, but only when they supply to you the customer, when you recharge those costs onto someone else, whether an employee or an associated company, you add VAT. Same with train or airline tickets, zero rated when you buy them from the train or airline company, but if you are recharging these onto someone else, you add VAT.

To be clear, because the entity making the sales is Hong Kong based, it is not a UK established company, therefore the VAT registration threshold is Nil, so any sales of any value would trigger UK VAT registration. If it were a UK entity/UK limited company, then the VAT threshold would be £85,000.

The zero rating applies only to the supply AND installation of energy saving materials such as PV/batteries. The contractor will buy materials from wholesaler, those materials will be plus 20% VAT as it's just materials. The contractor then installs those materials to your property - the act of installing those materials should see the whole supply (materials + labour) being zero rated. the contractor can reclaim the VAT they incur when they buy the materials. If your quote is including VAT at 20% then you should challenge the contractor and ask why they have not zero rated their quote. Note, the install of PV/batteries is zero rated, not "exempt", in your post you refer to VAT exempt status, there is no exemption from VAT, VAT is charged but at 0% so when speaking with contractor use the correct language so that there is no ambiguity with them. If you buy materials yourself from a wholesaler, they will be plus 20% VAT.

Place of supply of services rules did not change post brexit. Your customer is a UK business , therefore place of your supply is where the customer is, customer accounts for VAT under reverse charge in the UK, you (in Sweden) make an outside the scope of VAT supply on your Swedish return (no VAT to declare in Sweden and with no requirement to register for VAT in the UK.

You need to set up a new government gateway for the new company. https://www.access.service.gov.uk/login/signin/creds scroll down past the green "sign in" button and click the link for "create sign in details" The "old" gateway will still exist for the "old"/dissolved company because of historical record purposes. You cannot add new VAT numbers to that old gateway. HMRC do not give the date of registration out over the phone, you can ask them to issue a copy of the VAT certificate in the post, this will only be sent to the registered address of the new business. You will not be able to create a new gateway unless you know the date of registration, so request a copy, wait for the post and then sign up for a new gateway. Dates of registration are not given out over the phone to prevent fraud, copies of VAT certificate will only be sent to address used for the VAT registration, again, to protect from fraud....what might appear frustrating is there to protect.