Could we still claim input VAT with till receipts only, or without VAT invoice?

Dear HMRC colleagues, We are online arbitrage resellers, and we purchased goods from supermarkets, such as Tesco, Sainsbury's, ASDA etc. We then sell them online. As you know that you could only obtain till receipt from those supermarkets. There is no VAT breakdown. Those supermarkets are VAT-registered businesses, and they do not provide commercial VAT invoices to individual customers. My questions are: 01. Could we claim input VAT with the supermarket till receipt only? 02. We have lost several till receipts, could you still claim any Input VAT on those purchases? We can provide bank transactions for evidence of purchases. Thank you very much for your clarification and help. Best regards,

Hi,

If you are VAT registered and you make it known that you require a VAT invoice as a VAT registered person then they must provide you with one. They can either provide you with a full invoice or a retailers' invoice if the value is below £250.

Please see section 19.5 in the following guidance for evidence required for reclaiming input tax.

Records and accounts

Thank you.

It's always best to not lose VAT receipts, whilst HMRC will accept other forms of evidence, the burden of proof is high. Just because you have a bank statement that shows you spent £100.00 at PC World, it does not prove the goods were for a business purpose (did you buy a computer hard drive or the latest Call of Duty game, one is for business use the other isn't) nor does it prove the correct VAT applicable if for example you went to a DIY shop and bought some shelving, saw blades and bottled gas for patio heaters, the gas will have a different VAT rate to the other bits, how then do you split the cost between the shelves and the gas? You can't reclaim 20% of the total if a portion of the expenditure had a different VAT rate. HMRC may not be bothered checking a few missing receipts for a few pounds, but it does point towards system failures and if simple things like receipts are being lost, what other aspects of the business are failing to comply, my point being, see the alternative forms of evidence as a last resort/one off, and not as just a simpler way to reclaim VAT without the fuss of keeping paperwork.

HI, Same case as Andrew. I brought some paper boxes from B & Q to storing my stock. They refused to provide me a VAT invoice, I just have till receipt without VAT details. May I know can I still claim input VAT ? and how to reclaim it? I have bank transactions as evidence. Thank you

Hi,
As you are VAT registered then legally any suppliers would need to provide you with a VAT invoice if you request it.
You will need this as evidence to reclaim the VAT as input tax.
They can also issue you with a retailers invoice which is sufficient for input tax recovery:
VAT invoices
Thank you.

Hi HMRC colleague, We understand the rules and regulations. In reality, it was hard to obtain for VAT invoices or retailers invoices from those supermarkets or high street retailers. We approached the supermarkets and retailers to request for VAT invoices. However, they refused to do so. We only have those till receipts. We have been told that the retailers/supermarket's VAT numbers were shown in the till receipts. Each item which was charged at the standard rate of VAT has an asterisk (* )after the item name. Some of retailers receipts have a number "1 " after the item name to indicate whether it is a standard or zero-rated products. Those till receipts have the supplier's name, address, and contact number, etc. The only thing that needs to be added is VAT breakdown and VAT rate display. My question is: whether this was sufficient enough to evidence the VAT rate for the input VAT claim purpose.

Hi,

Please see section 19.5 of the following guidance as this details the evidence required for the recovery of input tax

Evidence of input tax

Thank you.