Minimum amounts per VAT refund request

You may wonder why you are faced with certain minimum amounts per refund country. Or why your intermediary states that an amount does not meet the minimum required. That's not up to the intermediary: each refund country shall apply its own minimum amounts laid down by law. If you do not reach that limit, then simply no request can be made.

According to EU Directive 2008/9/EC, a general minimum of €400 per quarter and €50 per year is applicable unless countries with their own currency have established a fixed conversion base.

The 2008 EU Directive (Article 17) provides that the minimum amount per country is €400 on a quarterly basis and €50 on an annual basis. However, some Member States still have their own currencies. When the Directive was transposed into national law in 2010, a fixed conversion equal to €400 (quarterly) and €50 (year) was established for these countries.

Exchange rate fluctuations have sometimes led to a slight distortion of the conversion rates in 2023. Below is the official minimum amounts of debt securities per quarter and per year for countries with their own currency. Furthermore, VAT refund requests can also be made in non-EU countries such as Switzerland, and Norway. These countries do not have to comply with EU directives and therefore have fully own minimum limits. Some examples: You may notice that quarterly minimum above the annual minimum.

This is deliberately arranged as follows: Member States want to avoid very low amounts being submitted every quarter.

• Switzerland: only annual requests, minimum CHF 500 (€500)
• Great Britain: quarterly minimum GBP 130 (≈ €150), annual minimum GBP 16 (≈ €20) These countries, too, therefore, have their own lump sums of debt totally separate from EU rules.

By raising the quarterly limit, the system remains manageable, while the annual minimum remains low enough to offer almost everyone a refund throughout the year. Unfortunately this also means: if you have built less than €50 in VAT per year, you cannot submit a refund application. This is a legal requirement and, unfortunately, cannot be avoided.