VAT and excise
30 September: the deadline nobody extends
Published: 2026-09-30
The deadline for reclaiming foreign VAT is one of the few dates in logistics with no exceptions at all.
The date
The claim must reach your own tax administration by 30 September of the year following the period it covers.
For costs incurred during 2025 — by 30 September 2026.
The claim is not filed with a foreign authority. It is submitted electronically to your own administration, which forwards it to the Member State of refund.
Why there are no exceptions
In a case on this very deadline, the Court of Justice of the European Union held that a late claim is invalid regardless of whether it is well founded.
That means even a completely correct, fully documented claim filed on 1 October has no prospect whatsoever.
There is no alternative procedure. The foreign VAT stays a cost to the business, and whether it can be written off once the refund is lost to a missed deadline is not settled either way.
How much time you actually have
Less than it looks.
The claim requires collecting every invoice with the mandatory details, assigning categories, checking deductibility in each Member State and preparing the submission. If a supplier's VAT number or an invoice number is missing, you have to ask for a proper invoice — and that takes weeks.
In practice the work is worth starting in July.
What happens after filing
The Member State of refund has four months to decide. If it asks for further information the period extends to six months, and if it needs more still, to eight.
Payment follows within ten working days of the end of the decision period. Interest is due on late payment.
Which means the money does not come back in the same year. Worth knowing when planning cash flow.
What to do now
Check whether all of the year's documents carrying foreign VAT are in one place. Usually they are scattered: fuel receipts with an intermediary, toll invoices with another supplier, repair invoices in accounting.
And check whether last year's claim actually covered everything, not only what the intermediary saw.