Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, whether his Department has made an assessment of the potential benefits of increasing the turnover threshold at which it becomes necessary to adopt the general rate for VAT for the tourism industry.

No such assessment has been made. The Government has chosen to maintain the highest VAT registration threshold in the EU. EU law allows us to increase the threshold in line with inflation, and it has therefore increased to £82,000 with effect from 1 April 2015.