As of 13 August 2026, AI can claim VAT on your UK business expenses.

What to actually do

1. Hand it to a person

   The route this page recommends

   Someone with a licence or accountable authority has to sign this before it counts.

2. Use a tool built for this

   Second choice

3. Do it yourself

   The distant third

   A chat interface, chat-fluent skill, and roughly 1 hour until you can act on the result.

   How to actually do it

   1. Open your accounting records and collect the receipts and valid VAT invoices for the VAT return period, including the original document for each expense.
   2. Put the documents into one clearly named folder and remove duplicates, unreadable copies and documents that do not relate to the business.
   3. Paste the prompt into a chatbot, then upload the documents or paste a table containing the supplier, date, invoice number, net amount, VAT amount, gross amount and business-use percentage for each item.
   4. Ask the chatbot to produce the input VAT schedule and place every uncertain, private-use, mixed-use, non-UK or missing-evidence item in the professional-review section.
   5. Compare every extracted figure and total against the original invoice and your accounting records, then check the general eligibility points against the relevant GOV.UK VAT guidance.
   6. Send the schedule, source documents and flagged questions to your accountant or VAT adviser, and only enter the approved figures into your VAT return.

   Prompt

   I need to prepare a UK VAT input tax schedule from my business expenses. Use only the receipts, invoices, VAT return period, VAT registration details and business-use information that I provide. Extract the supplier, invoice date, invoice number, net amount, VAT amount, gross amount, VAT rate, currency and document reference for each item. Separate items into: apparently eligible for input VAT, apparently ineligible, missing evidence, and needs professional review. Do not invent figures, VAT rates, invoice details or eligibility decisions. Do not treat a bank transaction as proof of a valid VAT invoice. Show the arithmetic for each item and the totals by category. Flag duplicates, private use, mixed business and private use, non-UK transactions, reverse-charge issues, blocked or restricted expenses, and any document that does not clearly show VAT. State exactly which facts are missing. Check general points against current GOV.UK guidance if you have access to it, quote the relevant GOV.UK page titles or links, and mark anything you cannot verify. This is a preparation schedule only, not a VAT return or professional advice. Do not submit anything to HMRC. End with a short list of questions for my accountant or VAT adviser to approve before I include any amount in the return.

   Open it prefilled in ChatGPT or Claude, or copy it into Gemini, which takes no prefill link.