Jay Cooke

Your Box 7 should reflect the value of your purchases, whether you can reclaim VAT or not. As HMRC have posted, if you have a bank payment in your bank account or an order confirmation or credit card receipt but no VAT invoice, you still record the value (gross) in Box 7 and no VAT to reclaim in Box 4 (so you could see it as a zero rated if that is easier). Come year end, in theory your Box 7 purchases should roughly match your expenditure as per your year end accounts/P&L and if there is a big difference then it might indicate coding errors elsewhere in your accounts, likewise, Box 6 should reflect the sales made by the business (regardless of VAT status) and so your Income in the year end accounts should roughly match your 4 VAT return quarters Box 6 (not always as your year end might be different to your VAT return quarters but point is a year end reconciliation between VAT return and your finalised accounts can help ensure accuracy and spot potential errors in your return or your accounts.

No Because you can never reclaim foreign VAT on a UK VAT return, you can only reclaim UK VAT charged by a UK VAT registered supplier.
So you cannot reclaim EU VAT relating to hotels, transport or anything else via your UK VAT return.
You might be able to submit a 13th Directive refund claim directly to the EU member state, different member states have slightly different rules as to whether VAT can be reclaimed on hospitality/food but in theory a claim could be made.
Such a claim is nothing to do with the UK VAT return. How to claim a refund of VAT paid in an EU member state - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) 
If it is a regular expense then might be worth using a third party firm to make a claim on your behalf (they will charge a commission, usually 25%-35%, no recommendation from me but this firm do have a useful table/chart that shows what each member state will allow for reclaim and what they will not allow. Link here : [Link removed by admin] If HMRC remove the link then just Google EU VAT Refunds and that should bring up several third parties who can do a claim for you. You can also make the claim yourself, you would need to visit the website of the tax office in the Country you wish to claim and find out from their website as to how to make a claim, most are done via a paper form you can download and post off with your original invoices/receipts, and all of these claims have a minimum claim limit of around €150-€200 so you can't submit a claim for €20 worth of VAT on beers/coffees. If you are based in Northern Ireland then you can make the claim using the HMRC website as it is a simpler process for NI businesses as they are still in the EU for VAT purposes and so can avail of the easier claiming process.

Always best to use HMRC's actual guidance and if something is not specifically mentioned in the guidance, such as feeding sets, then assume it doesn't apply to whatever Notice you are reading. Young children's clothing and footwear (VAT Notice 714) - GOV.UK
Is a bowl, a plate, a cup and cutlery the same as a bib?
The zero rating is specifically for children's clothing and bibs are deemed to be clothing as they are worn by babies almost all the time and HMRC accept plastic bibs can still be clothing as they too are worn on the body.
Do babies wear spoons, cups and forks as clothing? Not intentionally!
Sounds like a single supply made up of a mixture of VAT rates, you may need to decide what the dominant supply is, out of your 6 items only the bib is zero rated, the rest are standard rated.
If you take a Christmas hamper it consists of zero rated foods and standard rated alcohol or goods like the basket itself, maybe a chopping board or some cheese knives, so you have to apportion the VAT accordingly, you can't just say the whole hamper is zero rated because there is a single packet of biscuits in the contents.
Worth reading this link and its subsequent pages which shed light as to how HMRC thinks/approaches this topic.
VATSC11113 - Supply: Single and multiple supplies: HMRC’s approach: The general approach - HMRC internal manual - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
Also useful and informative article here which contains further links to HMRC guidance which has recently been updated https://www.accountingweb.co.uk/tax/business-tax/guidance-updated-on-apportioning-multiple-supplies

Whilst the supply of services to overseas business customers is outside the scope of VAT, if you use that code in some accounting software, it does not show the net sale value in Box 6 (indeed, it will not appear on the VAt return at all). So generally, code such sales to zero rate so that the net value hits Box 6 but without affecting the output tax due. mentioned here in below Notice &700/12), section 3.6, second but last bullet point "supplies which are outside the scope of UK VAT as described in Place of supply of services (VAT Notice 741A)" https://www.gov.uk/guidance/how-to-fill-in-and-submit-your-vat-return-vat-notice-70012 With regard goods, where the place of supply is determined by the location of the goods at time of dispatch, you do not need to record these on the UK VAT return, because you'll have declared those sales on the overseas VAT return. That may mean that your Box 6 on UK VAT return is not a true reflection of your actual turnover so you would need to factor that difference in when doing monthly reconciliation, etc.

What do you mean "provided in the UK"? If the goods have not left the UK and the German customer is using those goods here in the UK, then you are correct to charge UK VAT (you'll have no proof of export as the goods never left the UK and so you cannot zero rate). If you mean your stock in the UK has been shipped abroad/shipped outside of the UK, then more likely the invoice should be zero rated as an export, as long as you hold proof of export/goods leaving the UK. The servicing/maintenance is a service (not a supply of goods) and that element would potentially be outside the scope of VAT, but depends on if the goods that are being serviced are outside of the UK and also whether this could be seen as a single contract of goods + maintenance or if it is two separate supplies of 1) goods and 2) services, often depends on the contract wording (ie, is the servicing optional or mandatory, etc).

Depends what you mean by "design services"? https://www.gov.uk/guidance/vat-place-of-supply-of-services-notice-741a covers the place of supply of services. Are these design services the design of a website, or interior design, or designing a health and safety at work plan, etc? Generally supply of services to a non-UK customer is outside the scope of VAT, that means turnover does not count towards VAT registration threshold in the UK, so you are probably not needing to register for VAT, You would not be a "UK established overseas exporter" as that refers to the movement of goods across borders, whereas you are supplying services across borders, goods and services have different rules in VAT.

You can only ever reclaim UK VAT on a UK VAT return, so whether it is NYC sales tax or Spanish VAT charged by a Spanish hotel, you cannot reclaim these on the UK VAT return, record them as gross amounts in Box 7. You may be able to reclaim EU VAT back by submitting a claim directly to the EU tax authority (in my Spanish hotel example you would submit a claim to the Spanish tax office under what are called 13th Directive regulation https://taxation-customs.ec.europa.eu/vat-refunds_en As HMRC have posted, you will need to contact the USA tax authority to see what rules are in play for reclaiming sales taxes, not all sales taxes are recoverable. The key takeaway is you can't reclaim these foreign taxes on your UK VAT return.

Amr. You cannot reinstate your old VAT number, you have a couple of weeks from being deregistered to reinstate it, but here you deregistered in 2017 so your old VAT number is dead. You will have to submit a new VAT registration, which you have done in June 2023. HMRC have had severe backlog of VAT registrations and can take up to 3 months for them to look at and reply to, you can contact the 0300 322 7870 after 40 days of waiting from date of submission to HMRC. Yassinedr - As above, HMRC dealing with backlog of applications, they are working hard to reduce the processing time but still taking about 2-3 months to process, you can chase HMRC on the above number after 40 days.

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.

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/how-to-fill-in-and-submit-your-vat-return-vat-notice-70012#:~:text=Box%206%20total%20value%20of%20sales&text=You%20should%20also%20include%20the,ve%20entered%20in%20box%208. Section 3.7 explains what goes into Box 6.