1. I have been engaged under a contract for service with the Institute for Education. What is required by me to fulfill obligations concerning paperwork especially regarding income tax and vat matters?

Engagement with the Institute, on contracts for service are on a part-time self-employed basis which imply the following:

• • Contractee requires to register with Jobsplus Corporation as a part-time self-employed person unless he is already registered.
  • Regarding income tax no tax will be deducted at source and contractee is required to take care of taxation matters himself. In this regard it may be beneficial to the contractee, depending on his personal circumstances, to use the TA 22 form to pay tax at 10% annually by the end of April of each following year.
    
  • Article 51 of the VAT Act states that no fiscal receipt shall be given if a person is providing exempt without credit activities. Schedule 13 describes circumstances of when a fiscal receipt needs to be issued. Given certain educational services as prescribed in the fifth schedule are considered as an exempt without credit supply, teachers are not required to issue fiscal receipts for VAT purposes. Nonetheless, records must be kept for income tax purposes as per Article 19 of the Income Tax Management Act but not for VAT purposes.

2. What is regarded as tuition by the VAT authorities?

The Institute for Education has made formal enquiries with the VAT department and has obtained written confirmation that services listed below considered to be an integral part of the tuition process are also to be considered as exempt without credit in line with the Fifth schedule, Part two, Item 12(3) of the VAT Act.

List of exempt without credit services:

Assessments including dissertation assessments, proposal assessors, internal verification, dissertation supervision and co-supervision, teaching practice visitor/practice placement visitor, in-class co-teaching , tutorial, recognition of prior learning, micro-placement visitors, revision of paper.

3. What should I do if the services to be rendered under the contract for service are not exempt without credit?

If the services being rendered by you in an independent capacity (self-employed) are not considered as exempt without credit, VAT registration will be required and there is also the requirement to furnish the Institute with a fiscal receipt upon receiving payment.

Further VAT registration may differ depending on the personal attributes of the contractee.

• • it may be an Article 10 registration which implies charging output VAT, claiming back input VAT and submission of quarterly VAT returns generally with payments
  • it may be an Article 11 registration, commonly referred as registration as an exempt person, which implies no obligation to charge output VAT, no right to claim back input VAT and submission of annual VAT declarations with no payments
  • Article 11 registration is restricted to Maltese established persons who do not exceed the small undertakings thresholds as follows: