As of 13 August 2026, AI can only partly choose the right VAT scheme for your UK business.

What to actually do

1. Hand it to a person

   The route this page recommends

   Someone with a licence or accountable authority has to sign this before it counts.

2. Use a tool built for this

   Second choice

3. Do it yourself

   The distant third

   A chat interface, chat-fluent skill, and roughly 1 hour until you can act on the result.

   How to actually do it

   1. Open the relevant VAT scheme pages on GOV.UK and save the current guidance alongside the business's VAT registration details.
   2. Gather the latest bookkeeping reports, sales records, purchase records, VAT rates, customer locations, supplier locations and any records of imports, exports, property or exempt transactions.
   3. Fill the bracketed sections in the prompt with actual business facts, leaving an item marked unknown rather than guessing.
   4. Paste the completed prompt into a chatbot and ask it to compare its proposed schemes against the GOV.UK pages you opened.
   5. Recalculate the scenarios using your own sales and purchase figures in a spreadsheet, and check every eligibility condition and cited rule against the current GOV.UK wording.
   6. Send the comparison, source links and unanswered questions to a UK VAT accountant or tax adviser and obtain confirmation before changing the scheme or applying to HMRC.

   Prompt

   This is not professional advice. Act as a UK VAT research assistant, not a tax adviser. Help me compare the VAT schemes that may be available to this business using current GOV.UK guidance only where possible, and do not present a recommendation as professional advice.
   
   Business facts:
   - Business type and legal structure: [insert]
   - Products or services sold: [insert]
   - Main customer locations and customer types: [insert]
   - Expected taxable turnover and whether it is rising or falling: [insert]
   - VAT registration status: [insert]
   - Typical sales VAT rates: [insert]
   - Typical purchases, VAT rates and approximate VAT-bearing costs: [insert]
   - Whether costs include large assets, stock, subcontractors or overseas transactions: [insert]
   - Current VAT scheme, if any: [insert]
   - Accounting method and bookkeeping system: [insert]
   - Any partially exempt, zero-rated, exempt, property, import, export or special transactions: [insert]
   
   First list the missing facts that could change the result. Then identify the UK VAT schemes worth investigating, explain the eligibility conditions and practical consequences of each, and show clearly which facts support or weaken each option. Separate confirmed rules from assumptions. Do not invent figures, eligibility, savings or deadlines. Do not choose a scheme where the facts are incomplete. Cite the relevant GOV.UK page for every material rule and state that the citations and current position must be checked before acting. End with a short list of questions to take to a UK VAT accountant or tax adviser, including whether the proposed scheme is suitable for this business.

   Open it prefilled in ChatGPT or Claude, or copy it into Gemini, which takes no prefill link.