The chair of the Association of the Golf Course Owners (AGCO), winner of the 1977 Women’s British Open and campaigner for tax reform in golf, Vivien Saunders, is set to stand as an MP at the 2015 General Election.
Vivien Saunders, who also owns two golf clubs in Cambridge and set up the Women’s Professional Golfers’ Association, has been at loggerheads with many in the administration of golf, including England Golf and the United Kingdom Golf Course Owners Association, for several years over the issue of taxation, which she believes has created an unequal playing field between private members’ and proprietary clubs.
It is not clear yet which constituency Vivien Saunders will stand in, but there are suggestions that it will be Maidstone and the Weald, which has been held by Helen Grant, the current minister for sport, since 2010. Prior to that Ann Widdecombe held it.
Saunders has not yet set up a political party but has stated that it will campaign on a reduced rate of VAT for all sports, and not just golf. It is thought that as many as five candidates for the party could stand at the next election.
At the heart of Vivien Saunders’ campaign is the European Union ruling last year that green fees at private members’ golf clubs must be exempt from VAT, while the same fees at proprietary clubs can not be, which, she says, will lead to the UK government paying back about £500 million of taxpayers’ money in a VAT rebate to private members’ golf clubs.
Commenting on the case last week, she said: “Can this country really afford to hand out £500 million to posh member-owned golf clubs? And remember if we don’t keep fighting, all the range balls will be VAT exempt too. AGCO has a case in front of Europe and a VAT tribunal in the pipeline.
“Rest assured that we are fighting the corner of all the proprietary clubs and the UK taxpayer.”
She has also accepted that she is likely to lose her deposit but this would be a price worth paying to raise publicity in her fight to stop private members’ clubs receiving the rebate.
As well as winning the Women’s British Open in 1977, Vivien Saunders was the first European to get a player’s card on the LPGA Tour in the USA. She also has a PhD in sports psychology and an LLM in sports’ law and tax, and is a solicitor by profession.
(Watch Vivien Saunders’ response to the 2014 Budget here)
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