When can I reclaim foreign VAT?

You can request refunds per quarter, but most entrepreneurs usually wait until the end of the year

Foreign VAT can be requested as soon as the period in which the costs were incurred has closed. Directive 2008/9/EC allows you to submit a request per calendar quarter, with a minimum amount that applies to a quarterly request. If you prefer not to submit separately each quarter, you can also wait and submit one request for the entire calendar year — this has a lower threshold than a quarterly request. In practice, an entrepreneur collects receipts from fuel purchases, hotels, tolls, trade fair stands and business meals throughout the year, and submits them once a year via the Tax Administration's portal.

There is a strict deadline: the request for a given year must be submitted no later than 30 September of the following year to the refund country, via the Dutch portal. After that, the right to a refund for that year lapses definitively, regardless of how many receipts are still outstanding. This makes the timing of submission less optional than it may seem: costs from January of a given year have the same submission deadline as those from December of the same year.

Where this comes from: Article 7 and 15 of Directive 2008/9

Article 7 of Directive 2008/9/EC provides that the request is submitted in the Member State of establishment, which then forwards it to the refund country. Article 15 of the same directive determines the period for which a request may be submitted — a quarter or a