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Flying for business in Europe

most of all your VAT identifier must be mentioned. This is what I meant by “formally charged”. Such is law here and I can not imagine it would be different elsewhere,

If by “your” you mean the buyer’s VAT identifier, it explicitly does not have to be mentioned in Sweden, except in the special case where the seller should not charge VAT (such as in transactions between companies in different EU states).

it would open the door very wide to fraud.

In what way?

Last Edited by Airborne_Again at 09 Jan 15:17
ESKC (Uppsala/Sundbro), Sweden

If by “your” you mean the buyer’s VAT identifier, it explicitly does not have to be mentioned in Sweden, except in the special case where the seller should not charge VAT (such as in transactions between companies in different EU states).

He means that the seller must show their VAT number, and indicate the VAT element.

I can only go on Irish conditions, but there are a few more than that to make a valid invoice for a VAT deduction.

EIWT Weston, Ireland

@blueline good to hear that! may I ask about your business trip destinations? Are they within Austria? Because flying from Wels to Vienna makes not much sense for me. But flying to Innsbruck, Klagenfurt or Bregenz/Dornbirn would be feasible and justifiable in my opinion.

He means that the seller must show their VAT number, and indicate the VAT element.

Sorry Dublinpilot, but that is not what I meant. I did mean to say that, for VAT to be claimable/deductible, it must be shown to have been charged to one particular VAT declarer. If not, one and the same receipt could be used by any number of people to claim back the VAT from authorities. At least round here, authorities accept photocopies from such receipts, as the originals are printed thermally and won’t keep. But if one photocopy is accepted, all the others have to be accepted too. I did mean that the buyer’s VAT id must be shown for the VAT to become deductible.

See the copy below – imagine you were driving through France with four people in a car, took fuel a couple of times; if all four have their business, then all four could enter these in their VAT reclaim? That does sound like fraud to me. Observe that the French tickets show the amount of VAT, the Belgian one on the right side doesn’t.

But indeed, it is high time we had some European standardisation. Apparently the EU is making a fool of itself in more domains than aviation.

Last Edited by at 09 Jan 21:36
EBZH Kiewit, Belgium

Sorry Jan. I didn’t mean to speak for you, incorrectly ;)

EIWT Weston, Ireland

There is a subtle scenario here which is what I suspect some people were trying to describe.

Let’s say you are Joe Bloggs (a normal individual, not VAT registered) and you are an employee of a company called XYZ Ltd which is VAT registered.

Joe goes to a shop and buys some paper for his company. He gets an invoice from the shop showing the shop’s name, address and VAT number. But the invoice is made out to either nobody, or to Joe Bloggs, but not to XYZ.

Q: when Joe puts that invoice into his expenses, can XYZ claim back the VAT?

Generally, in the UK, it can, I think, but in practice very few people bother to do this with employees’ expenses because the amounts are trivial.

This scenario has a bearing on GA flying for business, because if e.g. you do a trip on the business and you obtain a fuel invoice which represents fuel spent entirely on that trip, it should be possible for the company to claim back that VAT even if the invoice is not made out to the company.

Obviously if you get that invoice made out to the company then there is no problem with claiming back the VAT on it. And most airports ask you for “your” details to put on the invoice, so you can just do that. But some fuel invoices are not made out to any name, but they do show a valid VAT number…

I bet the regs on this vary widely around Europe.

But if one photocopy is accepted, all the others have to be accepted too

Yes, but that’s always possible. About 30 years ago I knew a man who paid himself out of his own business, tax free, by submitting receipts from a fictitious printer and drawing the money out. But you always come up against the same old issue: if the amounts are small, it’s not worth the bother fiddling them, and if they are large then they will draw attention of you get a tax inspection and since they can be verified via another route you will eventually get caught.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

No prob, DublinPilot, and it is an interesting discussion anyway; as long as we are allowed to remain off-topic. FWIW I am not an accountant but I used to work for them, setting up their nice new software and explaining how to use it; and to this day I do my own VAT declarations, if only to keep up with it, leaving only the income tax declaration to the external accountant.

EBZH Kiewit, Belgium
Last Edited by at 09 Jan 21:59
EBZH Kiewit, Belgium

@Dominik: Well, I work in Vienna and have flown myself two times from LOAN to appointments in Linz. Stupid but fun .

OTOH, we have a costumer in the South of Thuringia – nice landscape, but absolutely in the middle of nowhere. Travelling there by car takes more than 6 hours. Flying with CAT to Leipzig or Dresden and renting a car is not much quicker. In this case, flying oneself to EDQM is really the most efficient way of getting there.

Destinations like LOWI and LOWK, while reasonably well connected to Vienna by CAT, can also be reached in about the same time, but with more flexibility, when flying yourself.

Once a year, I need to go to Verona on business. CAT connections from Vienna are a PITA. Two years ago, I had to fly via Berlin! But unfortunately the weather has prevented me from doing this trip myself so far. I have only flown there once for the opera in the summer.

LOAN Wiener Neustadt Ost, Austria

Leipzig is another good example from the UK. You can’t fly there direct. So a full day of meetings will cost you three days unless you fly into Berlin and drive or take a train from there. Even then you can’t get out and back in a day.

In two weeks I need to go to Vilshofen, Straubing then Hamburg. I can do it in two days with lots of time for business. Try doing it with CAT.

Last Edited by JasonC at 09 Jan 23:11
EGTK Oxford
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