Background
An innovative, fast-growing Irish-based software company with a strong presence across the EU and the UK. The company’s teams regularly travel for business development, conferences, partner meetings, and client support, incurring thousands of euros in eligible expenses annually across multiple European countries.
The Challenge
Despite growing operations across Europe, our client had never fully reclaimed foreign VAT on business expenses due to:
- Lack of internal knowledge of EU VAT reclaim procedures.
- Inconsistent documentation from employees across different markets.
- Confusion around post-Brexit VAT reclaim rules.
- Limited visibility into how much VAT was recoverable.
With no centralised process, potential refunds were left on the table, directly affecting the company’s profit margins.
Our Solution
GTR was engaged to provide a fully managed VAT recovery solution, customised for the software industry and EU-wide travel and expenses.
We rolled out the following process:
- Expense audit and eligibility analysis to identify reclaimable VAT across 16 EU countries and the UK.
- Provided advice to our client to improve documentation quality (receipts, invoices, and claim codes).
- Automated collection and processing of T&E data from their expense management platform Concur.
- Expert submission and follow-up with each national tax authority in local languages.
Result
- €132,500 in VAT recovered across Germany, Austria, Norway, Sweden, France, the Netherlands, Spain, Italy, Poland, Croatia and the UK in the first year.
- A consistent quarterly reclaim cycle is now in place, driving long-term cash flow improvement.
- 98% claim acceptance rate, faster turnaround due to compliant and accurate submissions.
- The internal finance team was freed from reclaiming admin tasks and could focus on growth-oriented activities.
