[ILUG] reclaiming VAT on amazon.co.uk orders

[David Giles]

Niall O Broin wrote:
> On 3 Nov 2004, at 02:05, Daragh Mc Grath wrote:
> 
>> Just wondering if any of you have purchased products from amazon.co.uk 
>> and successfully reclaimed the VAT charged as a registered Irish 
>> company? I can't see exactly from the website if they allow for 
>> entering vat numbers etc for Invoice purposes?
> 
> 
> You can't reclaim VAT paid to another European country. Believe me, I 
> tried before. You will get various people saying that it's possible, but 
> they will all say that you have to start by asking somebody else.
> 
> What you need to do is not pay the VAT in the first place, which you do 
> by providing the vendor with your Irish VAT number which they will 
> verify. Of course, this means that your vendor has to be willing to do 
> that - some are, some are not. I never tried with Amazon.
> 


100% Correct (and yes, not all EU suppliers know/care about it):

http://www.trade.uktradeinvest.gov.uk/ireland/doingbusiness/08_customs/customs.shtml

" VAT between EU Member Countries is based on the "Destination Principle".

The UK exporter will need to obtain the VAT registration number of their 
customer

and quote it on their sales invoices along with their own VAT 
registration number.

The UK exporter will zero rate the goods and the importer in Ireland 
will declare

the goods on their VAT return form. "


Anybody had any luck with dabs?  I emailed them some time back on the 
same topic, but never got a reply :-(  Damn you komplett and your tardy 
stock levels!