Jurisdiction(s):
United Kingdom

Related legal acts

Key definition

Goods definition

What does Goods mean? In legal practice, goods are tangible, movable items that are bought, sold, supplied or hired under commercial or consumer contracts. Across the UK and Ireland, legislation defines the term: the Sale of Goods Act 1979 (England & Wales and Scotland), the Sale of Goods Act (Northern Ireland) 1979, and in Ireland the Sale of Goods Act 1893 as amended by the 1980 Act. Broadly, goods comprise all personal chattels (in Scotland, all corporeal moveables) other than money and things in action. The statutory definition includes emblements and industrial growing crops, and items attached to or forming part of land...

UK VAT exemptions: scope, principal categories (land, insurance, financial services, education, health and welfare), exclusions, option to tax, assimilated law context, and VAT on private school fees from 2025.

Published by a LexisNexis Tax expert

Practice notes

In the UK, VAT applies to supplies of goods and services made by a taxable person in the course of business activity, save where those supplies are exempt (or zero‑rated—see Practice Note: VAT—zero‑rated and reduced rate supplies). A VAT exemption carries three principal effects, namely:

the supplier does not need to charge VAT on the transaction
the value of the supply is ignored when determining whether the supplier must register for VAT purposes
input tax attributable to exempt supplies cannot be reclaimed—so for a business making exempt supplies, that input VAT represents an absolute (and not merely a timing) cost

For a fuller explanation of the rules on input tax recovery, see Practice Note: When can a person recover VAT? The Value Added Tax Act 1994 (VATA 1994) sets out 16 groups of exempt supplies. Those groups were derived from EU Council Directive 2006/112/EC (the VAT Directive) or its predecessors, yet material differences existed between the UK legislation and the Directive. Where doubt arose, the UK courts have historically looked to the provisions of the VAT Directive for guidance and interpretation. In practice, the Directive functioned as a persuasive reference point...

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Web page updated on 22/05/2026

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