Held, appeal allowed. The Upper Tribunal had accepted that the jurisprudence of the CJEU established that where it was possible to identify a predominant element amongst the elements that characterised the single complex supply, the primary test for characterising the supply was the predominant element test. The predominant element had to be determined from the viewpoint of the typical consumer having regard to an overall assessment of the objective characteristics of the supply. The revenue contended that the predominant element test was not a mandatory test. It was common ground that such a test had not been recognised as mandatory by the Court of Appeal or Supreme Court. It was therefore necessary to consider whether, as the Upper Tribunal held, EU law did establish a general principle of law for the characterisation of a supply. The CJEU had established a principle of EU law that the predominant element test was the primary test to be applied in characterising a supply for VAT purposes and gave authoritative guidance on the test for deciding how a single complex supply had to be categorised for VAT purposes. The language used by the court in setting out the test was mandatory. Where it was possible to do so, the predominant element had to be determined ( paras 18, 38, 40, 47, 67, 68).

As to whether the Upper Tribunal correctly characterised the service for the purposes of deciding whether it fell within article 59(c), it was necessary to identify the nature of the relationship between the supplier and the customer, and, in order to do that, the effect of the contractual documentation had to be considered first, before deciding whether any conclusion drawn from the contract was undermined by the facts relied on by either party. The taxpayer's only contractual obligation identified by the express terms of the contract was to supply introductions. There could be no doubt that the typical consumer would regard the provision of introductions to prospective long-term partners as the qualitatively most important element of the service. Indeed, that was the Upper Tribunal’s own conclusion. In light of the contract, that was the predominant element of the supply. The service provided by the taxpayer, therefore, was not a service habitually supplied by consultants or consultancy firms giving expert advice to a client. What it did was different. Nor was the service either data processing or the supply of information. Accordingly, the service supplied by the taxpayer to clients outside the UK and EU did not fall within article 59(c) and was within the scope of VAT ( paras 57–58, 65–66, 67, 68).