Claiming back VAT on a holiday in the UK

[Jacqi B]

I am a permanent resident of NZ and am on holiday in the UK on a UK passport. I'm not an NZ citizen yet so no kiwi passport and would have travelled here on my UK one anyway. I bought stuff (mainly clothes) at a place that had a notice pointing out that if I lived outside of the EU I could claim the VAT back. The woman at the Customer Service Desk seemed to think that I wouldn't get my tax back as I had a UK passport. I'm fairly sure she is wrong but another possible problem has occurred to me: I used a UK credit card to pay for it.

Now in the great scheme of things, if I don't get my tax back it's not the end of the world, but I might buy some more stuff if I know I'm getting 20% back.

Has anyone here successfully claimed back the VAT in the same circumstances? UK passport, items paid for with a UK credit card, but going home to NZ with permanent residence?

[lou76]

Hi, yes I have claimed back the VAT. There are rules around it, such as not returning to the UK for 12months, or something like that. You also have you be able to show the goods (unworn and unopen) at the airport, so it can be a pain .

You can also group the receipts together from each shop. John Lewis told me to take all me receipts to them at the end of my stay and they would process them together- it saves on the fess they take, which can be quite hefty.

[mylesdw]

I have claimed VAT back in the circumstances you describe and I think it was only the boarding pass that they were interested in. Many NZ residents still have a UK passport. The queue for the reclaim can be long, well over an hour in my case. The whole process is not straightforward; they don't just give you the money.
They send an instruction back to the trader authorising them to credit your card. I'm not sure how it works for cash purchases.

[norma]

As the others have said, yes you can claim even on UK passport and credit card. I did it many times when I lived in Hong Kong and New Zealand. You'll find the bigger stores of the big chains deal with this better. I seem to recall that a small Debenhams store wouldn't do it for me because I used a UK credit card. You won't get the full 20% off either; some admin charges reduce the figure slightly but if you're planning to head home with a suitcase full of M&S undies, it's better than a poke in the eye. The last time we did it at Heathrow, the reclaim booth was in the check-in area so we processed it before checking in our suitcases. From Manchester some time ago, the booth was after passport control so we had to have all our purchases in hand luggage. This might have changed. More info here:

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/vat/sectors/c...s-visitors.htm

[jawnbc]

Depends on where I leave the EU from, but generally I think that as a citizen of the EU (and passport holder) that rebate is targeting visitors. I'm an ex-pat (of a sort) so I don't claim back the VAT. However I love that amazon.co.uk deducts the VAT when I order stuff to be shipped to NZ