EU VAT Refunds

A UK VAT registered business is entitled to reclaim much of the VAT it pays in other EU countries. So if you pay VAT on exhibition space you hire in France, you can normally reclaim this VAT from the French tax authorities.

The new system from 1 January 2010 is based on electronic procedures:

• An electronic claim is submitted in the country where you are VAT registered, so for a UK company that is submitted to HMRC.
• HMRC will then forward the claim (also by electronic means) to the country where the VAT was paid. The tax authority in that country then has four months to process it and a further ten days to make a repayment.
• The return is mainly based on numbers, so language issues are no longer a major problem.

Before submitting a claim, it is important to check that the country in question does not have any block on claiming for certain categories of expenditure. For example, many countries do not allow claims to be made for travel or hotel related costs.