VAT refund on ebay UK purchases

[sidvar]

One ebay shoe seller, schuh, advertises his wares as "vat inclusive" and says he will refund VAT (i.e. 17.5 per cent) to US buyers. But others, when asked, say "we don't include VAT". But if they don't, how come UK bidders for their wares pay the same price? Aren't they legally obliged to charge VAT for EU sales? Can anyone shed light o this? I am afraid some sellers are charging us the full VAT price but not turning that money over to HM Treasury because these are VAT-exempt sales.

 

[Wicky]

Shooting of this hip here but maybe this depends on whether the Seller is a professional party or a private seller. The first one is likely considered to be an entrepreneur and thus, in principle, needs to charge appropriate VAT rate (and pay this to the Revenue, whilst on the other hand he can recover input VAT), whilst the private seller does not need to do this.

 

[maxnharry]

I suspect most of the sellers are private party and do no collect VAT - so there is nothing to be refunded to you.

 

[speedster.8]

VAT is a difficult issue ...
When traveling in europe, anny noe european resident can get aprox 12% of on purchases abbove a certain level throuh systems like TAXFREE.
I think france & Italy is 130€ that is based on their 19% vat the higher the amount the closer you get to 19% on the TAXFREE system.
If the seller is willing to do the work and you have the time there is always the option to do a complete tax exemtion aplicaton.
But that involves going to the customs, getting all the forms.
Having the seller fill it out, you stamp and send the correct copies back to seller. He will then pay back the full vat amount ...
Turnaround time is usualy the same as hving the TAXFREE system pay you back the amount on tour card. But with the systems that do the woork for you there is usualy the option to get cash at the airport.

I recently asked a UK seller to exemt my order, but he claimed the could not, due to profitt ...
So the order might have been below a level or he vas not willing to do the work, who knows? Maybe he wanted to recoup, and keep the diff ...

 

[speedster.8]

I have a severely frustrating issue like this with YOOX. They have different pricing for different markets ... For eu region they have one, so between sweden and norway there is a 30% difference

And we then get charged 25% VAT on the order, wich already has EU tax on it! So all in all anny order to Norway is aprox 50% higher than for a EU resident ... When I asked, they answerd with a reference from their faq. abut not beeing responsible for local tax ... Needless to say, my last order was when I was in France, so i saved 800$ on a Jil Sander Shearling