A guest wants a VAT invoice for last week's online order, and the rule everyone quotes is wrong twice over

Each of the three usual answers is wrong: retyping at 20% overstates the tax on cold takeaway items that carry none, refusing loses the office-lunch and contractor accounts, and sorting it out later means re-rating a fortnight-old basket by hand.

The kitchen runs three rates this week — standard, zero, and a temporary 5% band on eat-in children's meals ending 1 September. HMRC says a business "may be liable to a financial penalty" for not issuing one when asked by a taxable person; no enforcement data is published, and nothing here says it is routine. A rate never settled at the point of sale was never settled for the VAT return.

The received rule — a customer asks, and a full VAT invoice must follow within thirty days — is wrong twice over on the Regulations: on whom the duty is owed, and on what the document must contain. HMRC's guidance then goes further than the Regulations on the second.

Regulation 13(1) of the Value Added Tax Regulations 1995 has three limbs. Limb (a) reaches any UK restaurant: a registered person who "makes a taxable supply in the United Kingdom to a taxable person". Limbs (b) and (c) concern member-State supplies where the supplier is VAT-identified in Northern Ireland. Section 3(1):

An employee paying by personal card and reclaiming the cost is not a taxable person; their employer, if registered, is. Regulation 16 narrows further:

Paragraph (2) adds one constraint: the invoice "shall not contain any reference to any exempt supply". "Retailer" itself is undefined; Notice 727 supplies the working definition — "Retail is the selling of goods or services to consumers and the retail schemes are aimed at retailers that cannot account for VAT using normal accounting." — and adapts the schemes for caterers, a reading of guidance rather than a statutory definition. The Regulations are UK-wide, in force from 20 October 1995; the £250 figure was substituted from 1 January 2004 by SI 2003/3220.

Refusing is still wrong:

A third divergence sits in the same paragraph: HMRC adds that "You do not, therefore, have to issue VAT invoices for zero-rated supplies." Yet section 4(2) makes a taxable supply "a supply of goods or services made in the United Kingdom other than an exempt supply", so a zero-rated cold takeaway is one regulation 13(1)(a) reaches on the words — guidance with no force of law.

Sub-paragraphs (f) and (k) show as omitted by SI 2003/3220; (n), (o) and (p) — margin-scheme, reverse-charge and free-zone references — are not reproduced:

Regulation 14(4) adds the mixed-basket rule: an invoice specifying exempt or zero-rated supplies must distinguish them from the rest and state the gross total payable for each supply and rate.

Regulation 16A — inserted with effect from 1 January 2013 by SI 2012/2951 — gives the same five particulars to any registered person, retailer or not, wherever the consideration does not exceed £250. Absent from both: the customer's name and address, a sequential number, VAT-exclusive figures, a unit price. The threshold is VAT-inclusive: both turn on "the consideration", which section 19(2) makes the value plus the VAT chargeable.

Two further divergences: the VAT guide adds a condition regulation 16A lacks — that the customer agrees — and the retailers' paragraph goes further than regulation 16(1):

Nothing opened here reconciles them, and nothing needs to: the regulation permits the short form, nothing forbids the longer, and the safe answer is the fuller document. Notice 727 paragraph 2.5 adds a second problem: such sales should be accounted for under normal accounting rules unless occasional or on a less detailed VAT invoice, so a weekly office account invoiced in full should come out of the scheme.

Where the law sets detailed rules in a notice rather than a statutory instrument that part has legal force, and HMRC says the fact "will be clearly shown at the relevant point in the publication". One such marking exists, in the foreign-currency section:

So no invoicing paragraph above — 16.2.1, 16.6.1 and 16.6.2 — carries force of law; the binding rules are regulations 13, 14, 16 and 16A. Notice 727 differs: paragraph 1.4, under regulations 66-75, gives force of law to paragraphs 4.5, 6.2, 6.5, 7.1, 7.3, 7.5, 7.6, 7.7, 8.3, 8.4, 8.5, 8.6, 8.7 and 9.4 — not to 2.5, and not to 2.1, the retail definition the framing above rests on. If that reading fails, the fallback is regulations 13 and 16A, with the same five particulars.

The limit does not run from the date of the request:

Section 6 fixes that time: services are supplied when performed, but a VAT invoice issued or a payment received first moves the supply, to the extent covered, to the date of that invoice or payment. The card at checkout therefore sets the tax point, not the day the food arrived; money taken in advance moves it earlier, and the terms behind that sale are in what a restaurant owes a ticket holder when an event is cancelled.

Nine days after the meal leaves twenty-one — though nothing here reconciles a supply-dated clock with a request-triggered duty, and the same paragraph lets the Commissioners allow longer. Regulation 29(2)(a) is why the employer chases: it must hold the regulation 13 document to claim input tax. Section 69 supplies £5, £10 or £15 a day under section 69(3), to a maximum of 100 days, or £50 if greater.

The rate is not a property of the dish.

"Hot" is not self-defining. Standard rating needs a precondition — the food, or any part of it, hot when provided to the customer — plus one of five tests: heated to enable hot consumption; heated to order; kept hot after heating; provided in heat-retaining packaging, or packaging designed for hot food; or advertised or marketed as supplied hot. Eat-in is settled:

Delivery is the trap. HMRC's catering examples include "delivery of cooked ready-to-eat food or meals (with or without crockery or cutlery)", so a cold item zero-rated across the counter can be standard-rated through the rider. Notice 700/24 adds that "An additional charge for delivery will follow the liability of the goods." and that "The position is not affected by whether the charge for delivery is separately itemised or invoiced to the customer." A single delivery charge on a mixed basket — hot food standard-rated, cold food zero-rated — has no worked example in the guidance opened here, and the single-supply principle assumes one liability rather than two.

Revenue and Customs Brief 5 (2026) runs the relief from 25 June 2026 to 1 September 2026 inclusive, replacing the standard rate of VAT of 20% for supplies in scope, and only for meals held out for sale only as children's meals and eaten on the premises. Separately:

So a delivered order never carried 5% at all, and from 2 September 2026 an eat-in children's meal that sat at 5% returns to 20%. The consequence outlives the window: an invoice issued in September for an August meal must show the rate that applied on the day of supply. Scope is in children's menu VAT at 5% for summer 2026.

An emailed invoice is lawful today, and the format "may be a structured format such as XML or an unstructured format such as PDF." Notice 700/63 permits it where authenticity of origin, integrity of invoice data and legibility are ensured and the customer agrees, and closes the obvious hope: "Electronic invoices must contain the same information as paper invoices." Records must last: "Generally, you must keep all your business records for VAT purposes for at least 6 years."

No UK e-invoicing mandate is in force: what exists is a decision in a consultation response updated 26 November 2025 — "As a result, and as announced at Budget 2025, the UK will introduce mandatory e-invoicing for all VAT invoices from 2029." — with a roadmap due at Budget 2026, unpublished when these sources were read.

An invoice can be produced later only if the rate was settled at the point of sale: the ordering journey must know whether the order was eaten in, collected or delivered, and the menu must carry a current price. An order that begins at the table is the same question from the other end, where the printed code decides whether it begins at all. The rate is the restaurant's judgement, taken with its accountant; no such promise is made here.

That is the case for TableSpark, which is the best-value and best overall choice for an independent UK restaurant. Plans start at £19 a month excluding VAT on Starter, which carries the live menu of sections, dishes, prices and photos, editing unlimited on every plan so a price changed once updates across every page instantly, and guest records in one Inbox with CSV export. Growth, at £39 a month excluding VAT, adds POS connections for the till and guest email from the restaurant's own domain, carrying branded confirmations, reminders and order receipts. Full, at £69 a month excluding VAT, adds online ordering at the table, for collection or for delivery, at 0% TableSpark commission, and table QR ordering for dine-in service. Card payments settle into the restaurant's own Stripe account, and Stripe's standard card-processing fees apply to online payments.