VAT Reclaim journey

[Benpointer]

I know there have been a few of these but I thought I would add our VAT reclaim journey to the mix.

 

We moved in on 23rd February 2026.   We received our BC completion certificate yesterday (18th june) following a painless final inspection.

 

I reviewed our spreadsheet of project VAT invoices today:  

• By comparing it with the spend spreadsheet I'd kept to manage the budget, I found an additional £1800 of VAT I could reclaim - not sure how I missed those before.
• Some of the paper invoice copies I had, proved to be no such thing - rather, sales orders or pro-forma invoices.  A few calls and emails managed to secure real VAT invoices.
• 161 invoices in total, totallying £20.9k VAT to claim
• Plenty of company names on invoices didn't match the official HMRC company names for specific VAT registration numbers.  For instance: Screwfix is really Kingfisher and Toolstation is really Travis Perkins (with the same VAT reg no.).  I am not sure how much of an issue that is but I corrected them anyway.
• We had maintained a spreadsheet in the HMRC template format so populating their template was a simple cut and paste.

 

I used the online HRMC form to submit the claim, guided by Google Gemini.  I know AI gets a bad rap but I really like Gemini.  I guess we'll see if my trust is misplaced.

 

Some points about the online submission.  There seem to be some trick questions, e.g:

• When did you occupy the property?  Gemini advises making sure it ties in with what the Council know because HMRC can check (really?)  But in our case that means three invoices since 23rd February could be discounted. I changed the spreadsheet description for these entries to make it clear we had to do this work to pass BC.  We'll see whether HMRC allow those.
• How many kitchens or utility rooms do you have?  In our case 1 of each.  Gemini advise entering 1 kitchen, 1 utility room but you can only put in a number, so I entered 1 (as in 1 kitchen or 1 utility room.  The risk in entering a number >1 is that HMRC assume it's a multi-residency project and will reject.

 

I received an email confirmation of my submission straight away, will keep you posted on progress or issues. 

 

Edited 3 hours ago by Benpointer
typos