VAT - do foreign tourists have to pay it?

Factual Questions
1

I’ve been buying DVDs from Amazon.UK for about 2 years now. When the total screen comes up, it gives the the total (in pounds) w/o the VAT (value added tax). I know that there are other UK-based DVD sellers that don’t do this.

Two questions:

  1. For the ones that do charge the VAT, can I get a refund?

  2. If I were to visit a country that has a VAT, would I have to pay it?

2

I don’t know how Internet purchases work, but I know that when I visited the UK two years ago, non-E.U. residents could get the VAT back on purchases of at least 50 pounds, which is an awful lot of DVDs. You could either fill out a form at the shop, which would then mail your refund to your outside-the-country address, or you could save your receipts and fill out one form at the airport, where one could get a credit card rebate.

3

Yep, when we vistied las year they told us if we buy anything big to hold onto the receipt, when you leave the county you can fill out forms at the airport to get the VAT refunded… We didn’t buy anything substantial while there, though.

4

When I was stationed in Germany back in the very early 1980s, there was a procedure for getting a refund of the VAT on purchases over a certain amount. The German government paid the refund.