Hello, I hope someone can help! I looked through various threads but could not seem to find an answer to the question I have. We are in the process of ordering a bed from London and have found a shipping company who will ship it over and pay the income tax for us and we will reimburse on arrival. However how would I then go about claiming the vat back? Has anyone ever done this before? I contacted the company we are buying from and they said they could not help with my issue of vat as they don't ship abroad! Many thanks in advance if anyone can be of help.

These threads might be of interest to you:

VAT question for UK furniture purchases

Claim VAT refund for UK to CH removal?

If the company you are buying from put your Swiss address on their invoice then they are legally not allowed to charge you VAT.
How you could enforce this I have no clue? Maybe write to their VAT office if you could find it?

The address on the invoice is not relevent, the company has to prove the goods have been EXPORTED to not have a VAT liability.

If you ever buy in Germany you have to put your address on the green form, after getting the form stamped the retailer will return the VAT.

Yes if you buy in Germany. But here the supplier is shipping outside the EU and so should not charge any VAT. This Swiss VAT should be charged on import.

Whether the supplying company has the wit to do this is another matter...

If you read the OP's post the supplier is not shipping outside the EU, so VAT has to be charged unless export has been proved, it's been the same for a very long time.

The OP has found his own shipping co......

The supplier of the bed is being unhelpful. The invoice will have a Zurich address. The fact that "they don't ship abroad" is plain daft statement from a London company in 2012 and is really no excuse.

I'd cancel the order and get the bed from a sensible supplier who can "ship abroad"...

Thanks to everyone for replying,the problem is no where will ship the bed we want(achildrens bed) to Zurich! Have spent the last few weeks looking. Out only option is using a separate shipping company. The invoice will not have our Swiss address as we had to put a uk one on(my mums). Oh well will update once bed arrives and we hopefully get it back to cover the extortionate costs in shipping etc... We found nothing similar here although we did in Germany but same issues with delivery in that no one delivers here!

When I had a similar situation, I had to send evidence of the importation into Switzerland (stamped by Swiss customs) to the shop. The shipping company will need to give you these. As the furniture shop I used also had no experience of furniture being shipped outside the country, I also sent them some printouts of the export VAT rules so they can see that they are obliged to refund the VAT.

here are the rules

http://customs.hmrc.gov.uk/channelsP...ument#P95_6411