We all love traveling abroad, sightseeing, sampling the local food and culture – and let’s not forget shopping!
When it comes to shopping, we’re always on the lookout for sales and exclusive discounts. Tax-free shopping can be a great way to save on your shopping abroad. Non-EU residents are entitled to a VAT refund, which runs between 17% to 27% in the EU, depending on the country they visit. That can add up to a lot of money and might even help you decide if you’re going to buy an item or not. But how do you calculate that refund?
Let’s say you want to buy something that costs €100, and the VAT is 21%. You might think that the VAT is €21, but that’s incorrect. The amount will be €17.35, as the VAT is added onto the original pre-tax price of €82 in this case.
If you’d be using Refundit, you’d get almost the full amount of VAT. In this case, it will be €15.7 after the deduction of a small fee.
So you’re in a store and just have to buy that pair of shoes, and you want to know how much it’s really going to cost after using Refundit. How can you do that?
First, try a calculator, as the one Refundit has on its website. It shows you the refund after the 9% fixed fee is deducted. We have the lowest surcharge in the industry, compared to other services that charge 30%-60% of the refund.
If you want to calculate it yourself, this is how you do it:
(Price-(Price/1.21))*0.91=your refund
1.21 is if VAT is 21%. It will change according to the size of the VAT. 0.91 stands for 91% of the VAT refund you receive after deducting a 9% fixed fee. For a 19% VAT rate, it will be (Price-Price/1.19)*0.91=your refund and so on.
Want to know how much you are paying for the item? Take off the price the refund amount, and that’s it.
Better yet, use Refundit’s calculator here. Also, once you use the Refundit app to claim your refund, the amount is calculated online and appears while you are still at the store!
Before you start shopping, please note that every country has a different demand for a minimum amount per receipt.
To find out what are the VAT rates in the EU and other European countries, just click
