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Yes — antiques are named in the rules, in all four countries. What decides it is not the piece on your shelf but the invoice you bought it on.
Written by Griet Coussement, founder of Vintro Pro and Vintiques Export
Yes, antiques qualify. What decides it is not the piece, but how you bought it.
A margin scheme is not just for second-hand goods. GOV.UK names four things in one breath: second-hand goods, works of art, antiques and collectors’ items. Antiques are in there by name, so a chest of drawers from 1890 is never the problem.
The problem is the invoice. Under HMRC’s rules you usually cannot use a margin scheme for an item you bought for which you were charged VAT. The exception: art, antiques and collectors’ items you import yourself, and art bought directly from its creator — after a written election to HMRC (SI 1995/1268, art. 12). And since 2025 — 1 January in the Netherlands and France, 31 December in Belgium — dealers across the Channel face a narrower version of the same idea: in the EU, art, collectors’ items and antiques bought at a reduced VAT rate are shut out of the margin scheme altogether.
A reduced rate on purchase or import rules out the margin. Law of 19 December 2025.
The additional margin scheme for purchases at 9% VAT ended on 1 January 2025.
Article 297 B of the CGI was repealed. The option no longer exists.
No reduced-rate rule, but a wider one: charged VAT on the purchase? Then usually no margin scheme. The exception: art, antiques and collectors’ items you import yourself, and art bought directly from its creator — after a written election to HMRC (SI 1995/1268, art. 12).
Four countries, four percentages, one idea underneath: VAT paid on the way in means no margin scheme on the way out. The UK got there first and by a different route, with a broader rule that has nothing to do with reduced rates, and an exception for what you import yourself.
The margin scheme is optional and you choose it per item. You pay VAT at 16.67% (one-sixth) on the difference between the price you paid and the price you sold it for.
HMRC’s own worked example: buy a work of art for £1,500, sell it for £2,000, and you pay 16.67% on the £500 difference. On an antique bought for £400 and sold for £900, the margin is £500 and the VAT due is £83.33.
Three things are excluded:
You do not show VAT on the invoice to your customer, and they cannot reclaim any. If you hold a lot of low-value stock, global accounting is the lighter version of the same scheme — more on that on the page about the UK margin scheme.
Age, not style. For customs purposes the category carries code 9706 and covers objects more than one hundred years old. In Belgium the same line is drawn in Table A, heading XXI of Royal Decree no. 20.
Under a UK margin scheme that distinction changes little — both are eligible. It matters when you buy or sell inside the EU, because the 2025 change applies only to art, collectors’ items and antiques, not to ordinary second-hand goods.
Two doors to the margin scheme
Chest of drawers, 1890
Antique More than one hundred years old. In the EU, the 2025 change applies to it.Teak wardrobe, 1962
Second-hand good An ordinary second-hand good. The 2025 change does not touch it.Under a UK margin scheme both are eligible.
Directive (EU) 2022/542 rewrote article 316 of the VAT directive. The new text opens with a condition that was not there before:
“Where no reduced rate has been applied to the works of art, collectors’ items and antiques concerned supplied to, or imported by, a taxable dealer, Member States shall grant taxable dealers the right to opt for application of the margin scheme.”
The same directive added article 98a: reduced rates do not apply to supplies of art, collectors’ items and antiques that are sold under a margin scheme. The two now exclude each other, and member states had to apply this from 1 January 2025.
How each country landed:
None of this binds a UK dealer directly. It binds your EU customers, which is a different thing from irrelevant.
From directive to tax return
The same chest of drawers, two ways of entering stock. The difference is in the invoice, not the piece.
You buy an oak chest from 1890 for £400 at a house clearance and sell it for £900. No VAT was charged to you, so the margin scheme is open.
The margin scheme is closed for that piece. You sell under the normal rules: VAT on the full selling price, with the VAT you were charged recoverable as input tax.
That is not automatically worse, but it is a different calculation, and it turns on how wide your margin is. Work it out before you buy, not once the piece is on the shop floor.
The same chest, two routes
Route 1 · bought privately
Route 2 · VAT charged to you
Normal rules VAT on the full selling price. The VAT you were charged is recoverable as input tax.Your purchase invoice decides the route, not the piece.
Under four different regimes, three things come back everywhere.
Four countries, one idea, with a UK exception for what you import yourself. What differs is which VAT counts and at what rate, not the thinking behind it.
Purchase, sale and margin per item. The UK asks for a stock book; the Netherlands adds a purchase declaration from €500 up.
A margin sale shows one amount, no rate and no VAT figure. Your customer cannot reclaim anything, and that is correct.
The purchase invoice settles the scheme. Thinking about it at the till means the choice was already made without you.
Then that piece usually cannot go into a margin scheme, however it is described on the sales invoice. The exception is art, antiques and collectors’ items you imported yourself, or art bought from its creator, after a written election to HMRC.
An antique is over one hundred years old. Below that it is an ordinary second-hand good — still eligible here, but treated differently inside the EU.
Without a per-item record of what you paid and what you sold it for, the margin cannot be shown and cannot be defended.
It hands your customer a deduction they are not entitled to, and hands you the problem.
This is an explanation, not legal or tax advice. Which scheme applies to your purchases depends on your invoices, and those differ from piece to piece.
You set it once, at the purchase: margin scheme or normal rules. Vintro Pro works out the VAT per period and keeps the two apart, without a second list to maintain.
30 days free, no card number.
Yes. GOV.UK is explicit: you can choose to use a margin scheme when you sell second-hand goods, works of art, antiques and collectors' items. The scheme charges VAT at 16.67% (one-sixth) on the difference between what you paid and what you sold it for. The condition that trips dealers up is the other way round: charged VAT? Then usually no margin scheme. The exception: art, antiques and collectors' items you import yourself, and art bought directly from its creator — after a written election to HMRC (SI 1995/1268, art. 12).
One-sixth of the margin. If you buy a piece for £400 and sell it for £900, the difference is £500 and the VAT due is £83.33. You do not charge VAT on the invoice to your customer, and they cannot reclaim any. The scheme is optional per item: for a piece you sell at little or no profit it saves you almost the whole VAT bill.
Three things are excluded: any item you bought for which you were charged VAT, precious metals and investment gold, and precious stones. That first exclusion is the one that catches dealers who buy from a VAT-registered trader selling under the normal rules rather than under a margin scheme. It has an exception: art, antiques and collectors' items you import yourself, and art bought directly from its creator, may go into the scheme after a written election to HMRC (SI 1995/1268, art. 12).
For art, collectors' items and antiques, EU member states may no longer allow the margin scheme when the reseller acquired or imported the goods at a reduced VAT rate. Directive (EU) 2022/542 rewrote article 316 of the VAT directive to that effect, applicable from 1 January 2025. This is an EU rule: it binds dealers in Belgium (from 31 December 2025), the Netherlands and France, not the UK.
Only when you trade into the EU or buy from a dealer who does. The UK is outside the EU and HMRC runs its own margin scheme, which has no reduced-rate rule. But a Belgian, Dutch or French dealer buying from you now has to check whether a reduced rate was applied on their side, so the question will reach you through your customers before it reaches you through HMRC.