claims. Also, because we are part of a network of European accountancy firms we can submit queries through our partners, so they arrive in the local language and there is no issue with translation.”
THE SPECIALISTS For Chantrey Vellacott DKF this is a new service. Meridian Global Services has been doing it since 1990, and now provides VAT reclaim services to companies across the globe, including Airbus, AB InBev, DHL, Ericsson, Honeywell, JC Decaux and Seagate. O’Brien explains how Meridian
works: “Companies can just sell us receipts from outside their jurisdiction. We pay them a
In the UK alone in 2011, £124 million of VAT on mileage was left unclaimed by businesses
percentage of the value of those receipts and then do the whole reclaim process ourselves. Or companies can ask us to go in and extract the relevant receipts from their files – we reclaim them and retain a percentage as our fee. Finally, they can integrate us into their expense management system so that executives send us their receipts and we do the entire compliance process, including VAT reclaim.” O’Brien estimates a company with a turnover between £10m and £250m could reasonably expect to recover between £10,000 and £50,000 a year. Industry experts report VAT recovery experts’ fees start at around 20 per cent of the sum recovered, and average 30 per cent, but can be as high as 50 per cent. As a result, a growing number of companies are looking at expense management systems that validate receipts for VAT as part of the overall audit process. Vine at Concur says: “The likes of NEC are using our system for this. It doesn’t mean they can do without a VAT recovery expert, but crucially our system allows companies to negotiate down the
fees of those experts, and only to bring them in for markets where they know they have substantial sums to reclaim.” Regardless of which system is
adopted, it is important to act soon. VAT rates are rising across the EU: Italy is set to increase its rate to 23 per cent in September; in October France will increase the rate to 21.2 per cent; and Hungary’s VAT rate rose to 27 per cent in January. In the months and years ahead VAT will make up an ever greater proportion of companies’ travel spend. What is more, VAT is becoming
ever more complex. When, in 2009, the German government announced
a reduction in the VAT rate for hotels from 19 per cent to 7 per cent, some hotels did not pass this saving on to customers, meaning that businesses were still having to pay the same headline rate, but were now only able to claim back 7 per cent rather than 12 per cent. By keeping track of these issues, some travel managers were able to negotiate down their rates with those hotel groups. The message is clear: VAT is now
too big an issue to ignore. Not only does it need to be firmly on the agenda for every single corporate travel manager, but it needs to be rapidly rising up that agenda. n