Glamorgan-Gwent Archaeological Trust wanting Vollys

[Unitof1]

Thing is Wax, Martin the volunteer trustee probably has access to one of probably the only two letters on VAT ever written by the HMRC to an organisation which has the word archaeological associated with it. I imagine that the HMRC just added up all the invoices from excavation and slapped VAT on it and left it up to the unit to fight its case. Unfortunatly this unit which is basically run by volunteers like Martin and whos experience of the business world is prodominatly not in business but acadiemia and local government and basic grant farming and who probably tend to view the solution to all woes like this

On the broader issue of funding for HERs, to me the simplest solution would be for them to become a statutory duty paid for by taxes. There are reasons why this hasn't happened, political or Political, and instead there is a patchwork of funding streams that delivers some sort of service - and that funding comes with a set of priorities that would not necessarily be ours if we were given a free hand. That's not a complaint, just an observation.

which they probably extend to their excavation services. On these grounds they then think that tax should be paid on just about everything including public access to archaeology. How that system works is that instead of the archaeologist finding the competative price for all things archaeologically necessary if you add up all the taxes including personell, insurance, VAT-we are doing this to pay a central government to then return these taxes to run a HER and units such as Gwent.

As far as I see it these volueenters are going to be going through the very thing that we produce for the client-grey literature and they are in their amauteur way going to extract knowledge from it. This knowledge is what we produced in the field. I though that taxes on knowledge where abolished a long time ago. http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/PRknowledge.htm

[kevin wooldridge]

I must be drunk, but I am tending to agree with Unit.....

....my point in an earlier contribution was that the simplest way to get a funded HER is to stop from ducking the issue and charge the end users the full cost of the service. Its is totally unreasonable to expect 'polluters' of the archaeological resource to be subsidised by the tax payer when other polluters have to pay the full cost of their actions. Especially so when some of these developers and development companies are amongst the UK's wealthiest individuals and corporations....

[Unitof1]

Bit early for drinking-and kev us archaeologists are paid to produce knowledge and to a certain extent disseminate it. What we have traditionally done is to produce grey literature for every single site. This is a bound paper product using real paper. We produce so many of them and then deposit them in various places. To my mind not nessecarily just in an HER what ever they are-well basically something that an advisor to a planning authority what like to have because that is the closest that they come to having any archaeological authority. The only reason for an advisor to need an HER is to down play the archaeology on a site. An HER is anti doing field archaeology. The HER has never ever been a public lending liberay. Show me a single one. They are all desperate to get digital beacuse they think that it can make it look like they are a public service when they are really a service to the planning authority which costs them a lot of money to basically have copies of grey literature. Round my way we have a museum, a document archive and some HERs. These HERs are little more than filing cabinates.

No we also pay museums to take the archieve which normally also includes a copy of the grey literature so in effect we real archaeologists are paying a museum to hold and disseminate our "knowledge". If I was to say which one between a HER and a museum I would fund first it would be the museum. They presumably will have the ability to conserve the grey literature as a bound collection of paper.

I think the planning authority should fund its own advisors and as I have said else where they dont have to fund anybody because all they have to do is make the onus on the developer to provide the archaeological consideration with the application and put it into the appeal system that planning applications have.

[BAJR]

I think we may be onto a wider issue here... and one worth exploring... having just started on producing the 6 copies of 3 reports I am doing just now. I would be happy to go to an HER and see my reports online and fully accessible and not be asked for ?xx per hour -- IF the volunteer work is to clear backlog ( which there will be) and this is then available to all. then I am happy....

What I thought was - you go into a library... " excuse me... are you using this book for a commercial job...?" er... yes.. " in that case that will be ?50 please" er... right! but we are the ones who provide the content!

:face-confused:

[Unitof1]

(go on Unit start a VAT thread)

heres a previous example

http://www.bajr.org/bajrforum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=2383

there might be earlier examples butI lost the will to die again in the archive.

[Wax]

looked at Unit's VAT thread, simple answer as a sole trader an archaeologist is unlikely to reach the turn over required for VAT registration. What charities and businesses do is complicated and off topic.

Back to topic BAJR has a point if commercial archaeologists are producing the content of the HER why should they pay to get back the information. However it is not the viewing of the content they are paying for but the time of the HER officer in setting up that viewing or printing off extracts from the HER.

Most HERs are part of the local planning system and probably the only part of the county archaeology service that brings in any revenue though some charge for producing briefs. Until local archaeology services are statutory I won't begrudge them the measly revenue the HER earns for them

[Unitof1]

simple answer as a sole trader an archaeologist is unlikely to reach the turn
over required for VAT

If you start putting all the site costs in the invoice you can quite easily get into the "turn over".

Also before reaching those those giddy turn over figures significant input and out put VAT figures are involved. Not only that but what it is that an archaeologist does, is involved. Tax maketh man. If I knew that what I produced for the client was zero rated or even 7.5% rather than 20% it would affect all advice on how to practise archaeology.

I might suggest for instance that all diggers should be vat registered.

[kevin wooldridge]

looked at Unit's VAT thread, simple answer as a sole trader an archaeologist is unlikely to reach the turn over required for VAT registration.

We have been here before. VAT liability is based on turnover not income. Assuming you charge a reasonable rate as a self-employed archaeologist (lets say something in the region of ?200 per day) you wouldn't need to incur very many extra charges (machine hire, facilities hire etc etc) to be pushing the VAT registration level (?77000 pa)...so actually many many sole trader archaeologists could be liable for VAT....

[Wax]

Any one working as a sole trader should have the VAT side covered by knowing what their turn over is or is not likely to be. Let's get away from the VAT question and back on topic.

[Unitof1]

whats the topic?