{"id":4410,"date":"2012-02-05T23:37:43","date_gmt":"2012-02-05T12:37:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.travelsignposts.com\/wordpress\/?p=4410"},"modified":"2012-02-05T23:37:43","modified_gmt":"2012-02-05T12:37:43","slug":"vat-in-europe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.travelsignposts.com\/wordpress\/europe-general\/vat-in-europe","title":{"rendered":"VAT in Europe &#8211; The Rise and Rise of VAT"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"float: right\"><script type=\"text\/javascript\"><!--\r\ngoogle_ad_client = \"pub-1009507070974015\";\r\ngoogle_alternate_ad_url = \"http:\/\/www.travelsignposts.com\/google_adsense_script.html\";\r\ngoogle_ad_width = 300;\r\ngoogle_ad_height = 250;\r\ngoogle_ad_format = \"300x250_as\";\r\ngoogle_ad_type = \"text_image\";\r\n\/\/2007-06-30: TSBlog 300x250\r\ngoogle_ad_channel = \"2928184950\";\r\ngoogle_color_border = \"FFFFFF\";\r\ngoogle_color_bg = \"FFFFFF\";\r\ngoogle_color_link = \"FF6600\";\r\ngoogle_color_text = \"000000\";\r\ngoogle_color_url = \"339933\";\r\n\/\/-->\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\"\r\n  src=\"http:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/show_ads.js\">\r\n<\/script><\/p>\n<p>As Europe muddles through to sort out its economic crisis, one of the measures for raising revenue has been the increase of <strong>VAT rates<\/strong>. <strong>VAT<\/strong> of course impacts on our travel costs and some of the VAT rates in Europe are already extremely high. So any further VAT increases certainly isn&#8217;t good news for the travelling public.<\/p>\n<h4>What is Vat<\/h4>\n<p>Unfortunately, VAT is not<em> &#8220;Vodka and Tonic&#8221;<\/em> as one cartoon suggests.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Value Added Tax<\/strong> or VAT is a broadly based consumption tax that is assessable on goods and services. From a traveller&#8217;s perspective, we pay VAT on accommodation, restaurant meals and other goods and services that we consume on holidays. It is a government tax and the seller of the goods and services is required to collect the tax and pay it to the revenue authorities.<\/p>\n<p>VAT is payable in all EU member states and in France you will see it referred to as <strong>TVA<\/strong> (<em>Taxe sur la Valeur Ajout\u00e9e<\/em>) or in Italy it is <strong>IVA<\/strong> (<em>Imposta sul Valore Aggiunto<\/em>).<\/p>\n<h4>VAT Refund<\/h4>\n<p>For travellers who live outside of the EU, you can get a <strong>VAT refund<\/strong> on your shopping in Europe, if the value of your purchases meets the VAT threshold of that country. So, if you&#8217;re planning on doing a lot of shopping on your European holiday, it pays to find out about the VAT rules for that country.<\/p>\n<h4>VAT Tax Rate for 2012<\/h4>\n<p>Below are 2012 Standard VAT tax rates for some of the destinations we cover:<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_4418\" style=\"width: 432px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-4418\" class=\"size-full wp-image-4418\" title=\"VAT_Rates\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.travelsignposts.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/VAT_Rates.jpg?resize=422%2C371\" alt=\"VAT Rates in EU\" width=\"422\" height=\"371\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.travelsignposts.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/VAT_Rates.jpg?w=422 422w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.travelsignposts.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/VAT_Rates.jpg?resize=300%2C263 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 422px) 100vw, 422px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-4418\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">VAT Rates in EU<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As Europe muddles through to sort out its economic crisis, one of the measures for raising revenue has been the increase of VAT rates. VAT of course impacts on our travel costs and some of the VAT rates in Europe are already extremely high. So any further VAT increases certainly isn&#8217;t good news for the [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4418,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[2363,2360,2362,1997,2361,2359],"class_list":["post-4410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-europe-general","tag-claiming-vat-refund","tag-vat","tag-vat-in-eu","tag-vat-refund","tag-vat-threshold","tag-what-is-vat"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is 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