The BMRA Secretariat is supported by member volunteers who sit on different groups and committees to help understand how best to advise members.

The VAT committee is one of BMRA’s newest committees and it convened in 2019. It was set up to investigate and hopefully tackle the issue of VAT fraud in the metal recycling industry.

Chair of the committee is FJ Church’s and BMRA Board member Nigel O’Gorman. Nigel said: “There are two main types of VAT fraud that we want to make members aware of – carousel and missing trader. We also want to educate the membership about how HMRC acts in both these cases.

“The committee had started gathering evidence with a view to get reverse charge VAT introduced for the metal sector. However, with Brexit taking full effect at the beginning of the year, and Government pushing the UK towards being a  greener economy, the committee is now looking into the possibility of VAT being removed from all scrap metal.”

Despite being a new committee, the group already has a number of objectives with work well-underway on them. Nigel adds: “In the short time since the committee has been set up, we have issued two sets of guidance, one to members and one to external stakeholders. This guidance examines the different type of VAT fraud, how they operate and how best to identify them.

“Within this guidance we have suggested actions that members can take to reduce risk of unknowingly being involved in  VAT fraud such as Know Your Customers Checks.

“The guidance also details the concept of joint and several liability and their associated risks.”

The VAT committee is in talks with an online service provider that can offer enhanced due diligence checks with a view to giving members access to their database.

Nigel has no doubts of the reasons to get more involved with the Association: “One of the benefits of being a member of the committee is as well as being more involved in the BMRA and seeing how it operates to support the industry but, by being on a committee, you are able to be involved with influencing Government on an issue that adversely affects our industry and gives you the opportunity of making a change that will benefit the whole membership.”

If you would like to get involved with the VAT committee or have any questions about the work it is doing, email: [email protected].