Claims for foreign VAT refund in most of the EU and the region must be filed no later than six months after the previous year. This means that the deadline for filing refund claims for all invoices from the previous year in most countries is 30 June of the current year. One exception is Great Britain, where the fiscal VAT year for non-EU clients starts on 1 July and ends on 30 June of the current year — which means that claims for invoices issued between 1 July of the previous year and 30 June of the current year must be filed by 31 December of the current year.
Another exception is the Netherlands, where refund claims can be filed retroactively for the past five years.
Some countries allow successive filing of claims during the calendar year (quarterly or half-yearly), while a few countries require that claims be filed only after the calendar year ends.
