Businesses are risking fines for not separately accounting
for the business and personal calls made by staff on corporate
mobile phones - a task that can create a headache for IT
departments.
Customs & Excise has set up a task force to pursue companies
that reclaim the VAT on personal phone calls. A Customs spokesman
said, "We are aware of the problem and we will crack down on it.
Where companies have wrongly claimed VAT, it will be up to them to
give us the correct figures, otherwise we will issue our own
estimate."
John Wright, special interest group leader at the Communications
Management Association, said, "Over recent months some major
companies have been fined a total of £1m for VAT reclaimed on
personal mobile calls."
Wright said companies faced great difficulty in separating personal
and business call costs, and the problem would get worse with the
wider use of mobile data services. For billing purposes, GPRS use
is usually measured by data volume, so you cannot tell whether
sports results or sales data has been downloaded.
Wright said companies needed to either enforce a usage policy or
outsource the whole process.