vatea.eu
Foreign VAT that companies are leaving on the table, and the OSS scheme made clear.
Companies leave foreign VAT on the table every year on hotels, fuel, trade shows and transport. Not because it is not permitted, but because claiming it is a hassle. Yet the European process is precisely harmonised and fully electronic: one digital request via your own tax authority's portal, with a decision deadline of four months in principle.
vatea has two legs. The first is the refund service: receipts in, request out. The second is the knowledge base on the OSS scheme for webshops selling across borders — the part that brings in search traffic.
What it does
Refund of foreign VAT
Upload receipts or connect your accounts. AI reads them, classifies the cost type and checks the deductibility rules per country; the request goes out digitally, with invoice copies where the country requires them.
Watching the thresholds
Approximately €400 per quarter and €50 per year, with filing by 30 September of the following year. Miss that date and the money is gone — vatea keeps an eye on it for you.
The OSS knowledge base
Thresholds, rates per country, invoicing and marketplace rules for webshops selling across borders within the EU.
Guided OSS registration
Arranged at a fixed price, instead of working it out across eleven different tax authority websites.
For whom
- SMEs with costs abroad: trade shows, transport, staff on location
- Webshops selling across borders within the EU
- Entrepreneurs who know there is something to claim back but do not know it can be done without an adviser
Where it is found
Country × cost type ("claim VAT back Germany fuel") and country × webshop situation ("OSS return marketplace"). On top of that, a free calculator — "how much VAT are you leaving on the table?" — that shares and links itself automatically.
Frequently asked questions
How much VAT do companies really leave on the table?
Enough that a whole industry has sprung up around it for big business. The SME segment below is unserved, because the existing players do not work at these volumes.
Does this work outside the EU?
No, and that is a deliberate boundary. Within the EU the process is electronic and harmonised; the United Kingdom and Switzerland are paperwork and fall outside the scope.
What if the foreign tax authority asks questions?
It happens, and it is electronic and standardised. Before vatea scales up, we will measure how often it occurs across the first hundred real requests.
How this platform is built
Like every platform from Theos Group: on one shared foundation, in our own hands, with our own automatic administrator — here C-3PO — who makes the daily rounds, reports faults and writes the daily report. What we learn with one system appears in all the others the following week.