Yeah the whole VAT thing is madness. I talked about this in another post a while ago. Where basically I got charged VAT twice. I mean who do you dispute it with ? companies just get away with stuff because it just simply is not worth the time and the effort. The amount of money I have just willingly lost because of all this over the years.. It would just be a full-time job and a constant uphill battle and I have enough of those already.
I have no idea how you would claim back the VAT charges. Companies are always very quick to take it off you. But trying to do something in reverse.. With all the rules changing and nobody has any idea what is going on anymore. It is even more complicated
For companies like Aliexpress, they charge the VAT up front. this is how things generally work now. So we would have to have a receipt for your order. All receipts will be grouped together for one declaration of value. But this is a problem I think Wolfgang may have, because if he has charged the VAT, he probably does not have time to reverse the process on that one receipt if it has already gone through his books.
But the old system still seems be in place where the courier charges the VAT when it enters the country at customs. Mix in that stupid £135? cut off thing as well.. That is what led to me being charged VAT twice.
But anyway that's another problem.
I had a similar problem last week in fact. Because I'm sending parts to China etc, I end up paying import charges China end. And they also end up paying charges when they are sent back to me in the UK. For one board I just did not bother sending the connectors. Because it would basically cost £100 to send it.. now would equally get charged that in coming back to the UK - bus the additional value of the PCBs etc.. So I said to a guy who's been helping me assemble my power supplies and other bits, if he would assemble the connectors on and have the £200 instead.. I mean sure I'm so out of pocket either way. But I would rather the money go to my mate than just disappear into a VAT void somewhere.
I guess if you have the time and the effort to continuously pursue it then by all means do so of course. But the way I just look at things, is I don't want to spend several weeks or months constantly messing around with something over £50-£100. It is just more cost-effective to forget about it. Big companies win yet again of course.
For all my goods I do not charge VAT and I do not claim VAT back. I just do not want all the headaches involved with even more paperwork. It is bad enough keeping track of my incomings and outgoings about making it even more complicated where the third company's like the tax office can screw it all up even more than they already do.
Anyway I do feel sorry for you that you ended up in this situation. Absolutely nothing is simple these days. Everything has to be as complicated and maximum paperwork as possible. People like me just do not have the time or the patience for it all.
