OK, this is the deal – I had a long talk with Barry Fuggle of the Millennium and before I go any further, I just wanna make a couple of things clear.
Barry is an OK guy and there is no way he is gonna bullsh!t me because he knows I would find out eventually and then things become a lot more embarrassing,
I actually do trust Barry when he levels with me and so here’s the rough gist of what was said :-
The VAT addition to entry fees was bought about because, ongoing talks over the past few years with the VAT people had come to a point whereby they (the VAT people) had made it clear that entry fees had to have the tax added.
Since VAT is a European consideration, the Millennium guys had to elect a host nation to charge and since the UK has one of the lowest rates (this is what I was told coz I don’t know the VAT rates of other countries) then they elected the UK to do the charging.
This causes the following problems and solutions: all non UK teams can apparently offset the VAT if they get a recognised non UK business (sponsor) to pay the entry fee, then I think in this case the entry fee would be VAT exempt because it is a European VAT.
However this is not the case for UK teams / businesses as they have to pay the VAT first and then claim it back afterwards.
But this can only be done if the company who is VAT registered (sponsor) pays the entry fee (and then claims it back afterwards on their returns).
Of course, if any of the Millennium teams cannot get a recognised business/sponsor to pay (or at least go on paper as paying) the entry fee then teams will have to pay the extra VAT tax.
If this is not clear, hard luck, coz I ain’t gonna explain it again
Ok, now this is the explanation of why there is an added VAT charge and in this case, I think the Millennium guys are above board and doing everything right.
However, we are now left with the problem of timing and Ulrich.
I will deal with timing first, Barry apologises wholeheartedly for the timing and of course the inconvenience it caused the teams, I believe his apology was genuine.
But, he did add, the announcement could have and should have been made 2 weeks earlier had it not been for our old friend Ulrich in delaying announcements because of some details that he thought needed to be clarified.
In reality, the announcement could have and should have been made two weeks earlier and thus teams would have not been so inconvenienced.
I then discussed Ulrich with Barry and made the point that Ulrich should never have had a say in the timing, he should also never have been the guy to tell the teams after the problems everybody has had before with him, and Ulrich should never have taken that attitude with the Millennium’s customers.
I made the point that Agge is a cool guy and not prone to be a hothead, and for Ulrich to infuriate Agge to the point he did just reinforced everything I, and others had been saying about ulrich over the past few years.
Barry wholeheartedly accepted my points, he also acknowledges a lot of other people have the same point of view as me, he 100% accepts his customer base should never be made to feel like Agge and in future, the guy who runs the Bitburg event (not Manfred, some other German guy, whose name escapes me) will be getting more involved in interfacing the Millennium board with its customer base …. Make of that what you will but I know how I am gonna read that.
In conclusion, it surprised me that this happened because the Millennium guys had been making significant strides in tidying up their act buit ..... allowing ulrich to do what he did was a big mistake, especially since this is not the first time he has done this.
As for ulrich’s future?
Well if I was on that board, his dismissal would be number one on my agenda but I ain’t and therefore only you guys can apply any pressure and you can only do that, if you get your collective finger out your collective ass.
As for the Millennium guys?
Well pedro’s now been marginalised and I think the rest of them (Barry, Steve, Manfred and Laurent) are at least (in my opinion) trying to do the right thing in the right way, this little event was hopefully a hiccup.