Come on Whirly....your post is a little inflamatory. I like flying toys, other people sell caps and T shirts. The idea of selling a secondary product is simply a method that would indicate that the trainee pilot is in fact, in business, and not employed as (an accountant for instance) and using some pretence to one day be a commercial pilot, when the reality may be that the pilot is just looking for a way to save the vat on their hobby.
As all accountants would agree, the best way to fund your training is to earn the money, not borrow it. I am simply suggesting a few ways that any trainee pilot can fund (say half of the £80,000) it may take to qualify.
1. Get £15,000 paid back from the Revenue.
2. Get 45 family and friends sponsor an hours training. £13,500
3. Start being a self employed pilot and open an online supporting business offering books, puzzles, jewellery, models, radio controlled helicopters, postcards, trial flights that your instructor can fly, anything else, anything else, anything else. Say £10,000 profit in first year and continuing each year thereafter.
4. Offer..........Oh look......Pretty well covered half by cpl.
5. Use my savings to cover the other half.
One thing is certain, I will be able to show the vat and the tax man that I am intent on building a business around my flying.
As for being devious, I have come onto this site to find substantial advice, and I have pretty well found simplerumours, for what should be a very clear and understood policy. Surely as professional pilots you all should have a clearly defined, understood and court/tribunal tested methodology to deal with these matters. As it stands, pretty well every school I have approached has a very vague idea of the situation which borders on hoping your vat reclaim may be successful, afterall it worked for my last student. Then when you find a student, he says it didnt work for him.
Remember, if a flying school can offer a definitive successful answer that ensures the situation isnt just hoping for a successful reclaim, that school has effectively made their training costs 20% more affordable.
I have suggested a few ideas that might cover all your ppl and maybe all your cpl training costs. Not trying to be devious, just trying to fund the training with the knowledge that what I attempt to reclaim, is reclaimable, and not seen by the Revenue as some clever scheme.
It seems a shame that the best advise from a professional pilots website comes down to "Pay an accountant"......because they dont know either. Or "Ask the vat man" because he wont be forthcoming about the successful cases won by trainees at the appeals tribunals.
So far this thread (for the past 7 years or so) has provided nothing of substance to answer the question. Is vat reclaimable on training costs?......Well yes! Ah, but maybe not. It depends.
So come on someone......Answer the question definitively.
Actually, I would expect to have such questions already defined in the ground school. If you are training to be a commercial pilot, doesnt any governing body want its members to be 100% exact with both its flying and its business, in order not to bring the whole profession into disrepute?
I do apologise for the tone of this post, and dont wish to offend anybody.
Its just that there are too many questions. And I am still stuck on R22 or 300c? and that may be the most important question of all.
Last edited by staywet; 24th Aug 2010 at 00:01.