10 October 2018 
Andrea Marshall, Tax Specialist
BUFDG and the Charity Tax Group engaged HMRC in discussions over HMRC's guidance in Notice 701/6 Charity funded equipment for medical and veterinary uses back in 2015, and had published notes of the meeting as an interim update on changes agreed. We are pleased that HMRC has now published an updated version with a new table 4.11 listing items which do/don't qualify for medical/veterinary zero-rating (providing of course that all the other criteria are met).
The list now includes additional qualifying items such as computer tablets and iPads, specialist animal bedding and thermal imaging cameras. We are also pleased that HMRC agreed with our arguments within the past month that DVD players and equipment should qualify as video equipment. The list also includes some clarification on items which previously caused frequent confusion and which HMRC have now clarified do not qualify for zero-rating e.g. nitrile gloves and printer cartidges.
Importantly, the list is now prefaced with a clear message that it is not an exhaustive list, and if items not shown on the list meet the requirements to be in any of the qualifying categories of equipment then they will be qualifying equipment (and can be zero-rated provided all the other criteria are met) - this could be particularly helpful if any suppliers are trying to stick rigidly to the list but you believe that an item falls into one of the qualifying categories of equipment (e.g. medical, scientific, laboratory, computer, video, sterilising, refrigeration plus the less commonly used categories such as resuscitation models).
