Expert VAT Advice Services

AAB provides specialist VAT advice to businesses of all sizes. Our VAT team helps organisations manage complex VAT rules, stay compliant, and reduce risk. We advise on VAT, Customs Duty, Excise Duties, and environmental taxes, ensuring businesses pay no more than required while meeting all regulatory obligations.

Alistair

Alistair Duncan

Indirect Tax Partner & Head of Customs

Contact Alistair Meet the team

Who we can help

  • START-UPS
  • ENTREPRENEURS
  • SMES
  • PRIVATELY OWNED & LISTED BUSINESSES
  • MULTINATIONALS
  • PUBLIC & SOCIAL SECTOR ORGANISATIONS

How we can help

  • VAT ADVISORY
  • VAT COMPLIANCE
  • CROSS-BORDER VAT
  • CUSTOMS DUTIES
  • EXCISE DUTIES
  • ENVIRONMENTAL TAXES
  • AGGREGATES LEVY
  • LANDFILL TAX

EXPERT HELP  WITH VAT & INDIRECT TAXES

Contact us for specialist support

As a transaction-based tax, Value Added Tax (VAT) should be factored into your business plans to ensure there are no unexpected surprises. Many businesses are also subject to Customs Duty, Excise Duties and various environmental taxes. Unlike VAT, which allows you to offset input tax against the output tax due, these other indirect taxes directly affect your profit margins.

Our team’s specialist skills have been acquired through supporting numerous clients, and working in HMRC and private industry. We provide comprehensive VAT advice and indirect tax services and, whether it’s compliance matters or complex restructuring, we’ll support you with practical, tailored solutions.

SAVE TIME WITH OUR VAT SUPPLY TOOL 

Amongst our services, we’ve developed a VAT Place of Supply Tool. It provides a clear audit trail of your VAT treatment decision-making, to demonstrates to HMRC that you have taken reasonable care.

For suppliers, it ensures VAT is only charged when due, avoiding lengthy and potentially costly arguments with customers. For customers, it allows early identification of over-charged VAT which can be corrected before it becomes a problem.

Get a clear audit trail of your VAT treatment

  • AAB have helped a lot with us getting our accounts on track and helping our new accounts team. Anytime we need help or are querying something they are on the other side of the phone or are able to come in to the office to help us.

    Asley Henderson, JD Neuhaus

  • AAB have provided an efficient, professional service since becoming our auditors in 2018 for the special scope assurance audit. They have developed a good understanding of our business and are able to manage the expectations of all engaged parties.

    Finance Controller, Multinational Energy Client

  • AAB deliver on time, every time and respond promptly to my queries and needs. I would, and have, recommended AAB to businesses who have since joined them.

    Graham Mackie, Dales Engineering Services Limited

  • AAB helped to build the Workflow Max application around our business needs ensuring that it met the very specific project requirements. From implementation to the present day, AAB have provided all the support and training we need.

    Mark Burntonwood, Director

VAT COMPLIANCE 

VAT reporting requirements vary from business to business. Whether you’re a sole trader operating a special accounting scheme or a large company with additional cross-border reporting requirements, our VAT advice can help you meet your VAT obligations.

With HMRC being increasingly strict on VAT compliance, it’s essential you can demonstrate “reasonable care”. We offer a full service for preparing and submitting VAT returns, saving you time for your core business activities. If you prefer to complete your returns in-house, our pre-submission review will verify you’ve applied the correct treatment.

As well as regular reporting, we’ll support you on other compliance matters, including:

  • Assistance with VAT inspections and enquiries.
  • VAT registrations.
  • Options to tax.
  • Partial exemption calculations.
  • Overseas refund claims.

Our track record of successful negotiations with HMRC will give you peace of mind.

Stay compliant with expert VAT advice

VAT ADVISORY & PLANNING SERVICES 

As VAT is “above the line”, minimising your VAT burden will directly enhance your profitability. Involving our experienced VAT professionals at an early stage in the planning process can achieve VAT savings that would be difficult to achieve retrospectively.

Using our extensive knowledge of VAT and how HMRC operates, we’ll work with you to create a bespoke solution that’s commercially sound, robust and fully meets your needs. This might range from checking for accuracy to planning the use of special purpose vehicles for a project.

We’ll support your core business activities as well as less routine areas, such as:

  • Acquiring, restructuring or disposal of businesses.
  • Acquiring, selling and developing land and buildings.
  • EU and international VAT transactions.
Talk to us about VAT savings

INTERNATIONAL VAT ADVICE

With both VAT and Goods and Services Tax (GST) becoming increasingly popular worldwide, it’s more critical than ever to understand the indirect tax consequences of international trade. Our experienced VAT team have significant experience of advising on international matters and, through affiliate firms in the Crowe Global and TIAG networks, access to an extensive global knowledge resource.

Even within the EU, there are significant differences in how VAT is operated. Expanding outside the EU brings additional complications including VAT/GST registrations, representatives and withholding, and access to VAT refunds.

If you’re planning a multi-jurisdictional activity, our team’s project management skills can co-ordinate advice from all the countries involved, to help identify the key issues and risks involved in ensuring compliance.

Get in touch about international VAT advice

VAT HEALTH CHECKS

Ensuring you apply the correct VAT advice to your business transactions gives you the reassurance of minimising VAT exposures and penalties. Our VAT health check service is designed to highlight any issues, maximise opportunities and prevent problems.

Our service can be a standalone exercise or part of a readiness review before an HMRC inspection, and will be matched to your needs. A standard health check would review:

  • Your supplies/income streams.
  • Your VAT recovery procedure and processes; including your partial exemption method (if applicable).
  • Non-core transactions such as property purchases and sales.

Our VAT health check can help ensure that:

  • Your VAT processes are compliant with current VAT laws.
  • You demonstrate “reasonable care” and remove any errors to avoid penalties.
  • By quantifying and disclosing any errors to HMRC before they are uncovered, you can reduce or eliminate any penalty.

As well as ensuring compliance, our health check will highlight opportunities to save VAT by ensuring all available reliefs are applied. Our health check generates real tax efficiencies, allowing you to invest those savings in building a bigger, better and more profitable business.

Need a VAT Health Check?

CUSTOMS DUTY 

Post-Brexit, access to Customs advice and services has never been more important. The Customs area can be complex with a diverse range of reliefs and regimes available to businesses, such as End Use, IPR, OPR, AEO and Customs Warehousing.

Unlike VAT, Customs duty is not recoverable, so the cost either has to be built into your pricing or will impact your profitability. We offer advice and support in all areas of international trade, highlighting which duty reliefs and/or regimes may be available to you.

Our Customs duty services include:

  • Assistance with implementing customs reliefs/regimes.
  • Advice on tariff classification and the rules of origin.
  • Business process and controls reviews – a customs health check that ensures your supply chain processes operate efficiently and that you access all potential saving opportunities.

Whether it’s supplementing your in-house resource on a specific project, or ensuring you understand your obligations and costs as you move into new markets, our expert team will guide through your UCC obligations.

Speak to our expert team

OTHER INDIRECT TAXES 

In addition to VAT advice and Customs duty, we can advise you on other indirect taxes.

EXCISE DUTIES

Like Customs duty, Excise duty is generally not recoverable, making it a direct and often substantial cost to your business. We’ll help you meet your Excise compliance obligations, from registration to returns. With the significant value of many Excise duties, we can also advise on duty suspension regimes, to ease your cash flow and working capital requirements.

ENVIRONMENTAL TAXES

The importance of Environmental Taxes continues to grow. With a mixture of devolved and national taxes, the position can be even more complex for Scottish businesses operating both sides of the border.

We are experienced in advising on a wide range of environmental taxes, including the Climate Change Levy, Aggregates Levy, Landfill Tax and the new Plastic Packaging Tax. Whilst these other indirect taxes may not be as common as VAT and Customs Duty, they are a significant issue for those businesses facing them. Whether you have to deal with HMRC, SEPA or Revenue Scotland, we’ll help you manage and minimise these taxes.

Speak to us about other indirect taxes

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  1. Blog17th Apr 2026

    Alistair Duncan, Indirect Tax Partner, professional headshot. Author of blog on VAT in Oil & Gas Is Changing: What HMRC GfC18 Means for Your Business

    VAT in Oil & Gas Is Changing: What HMRC GfC18 Means for Your Business

    The complex place of supply rules for services is an area that repeatedly creates issues in the Energy sector. Complex supply chains Offshore operations Multiple customer establishments Each of which can frequently lead to VAT being applied incorrectly. To try…

    By Alistair Duncan

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  2. Blog19th Jun 2025

    Gabrielle Bird, author of blog about VAT recovery on pension investment costs.

    VAT recovery on pension investment costs: What’s changed?

    Yesterday, HMRC issued Revenue and Customs Brief 4 (2025), marking a major shift in the long-running saga of VAT recovery on pension investment costs. For businesses and trustees alike, this is more than a technical tweak—it’s a chance to simplify…

    By Alistair Duncan

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  3. Blog1st May 2025

    Gabrielle Scotford, author of blog about HMRC’s 2025 VAT Brief

    HMRC Business Brief 2(2025): What Care Providers Need to Know

    Recent changes in HMRC’s VAT policy could significantly increase costs for state-regulated care providers. Business Brief 2 (2025) specifically targets VAT grouping arrangements that were previously used to recover VAT on otherwise exempt services. The new rules mean that many…

    By Alistair Duncan

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  4. Blog12th Feb 2025

    Alistair Duncan, Indirect Tax Partner, professional headshot. Author of blog on VAT in Oil & Gas Is Changing: What HMRC GfC18 Means for Your Business

    US Tariff Changes: What UK Businesses Need to Know

    The new US Administration has introduced a series of new tariff changes that could have serious financial and operational consequences. A series of Executive Orders have been signed by President Donald Trump placing additional tariffs on not only several products…

    By Alistair Duncan

    View more