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UK - reclaim VAT on purchases for freelance work
You are either VAT registered or you are not VAT registered.  If you are not VAT registered, then you are not allowed to charge customers VAT, and you cannot reclaim VAT that you are paying. You are however allowed to deduct the cost of goods including VAT from your expenses. So if you buy a computer for £1000 + £200 VAT, and you can deduct the computer as an expense to reduce your profits that you pay income tax for, then the expense is £1,200 and not just £1,000.  If you are VAT registered, then you MUST charge every customer 20% VAT. Business customers don't mind at all, but private customers will be happier if you don't charge VAT because your bills will be a lot lower. You take all the VAT that you received, then subtract all the VAT that you paid for business expenses and that you have invoices for, and send the remainder to HMRC four times a year. (The reason that businesses don't mind paying VAT is because they can in turn deduct the VAT they pay you from the VAT that they received and for every pound they give you, they give one pound less to HMRC). Note that when you have expenses that are deductible from your profits, you can now only deduct the cost excluding VAT. On the other hand, the VAT you receive doesn't count as income and doesn't lead to profits that you need to pay income tax for. It's your decision whether you want to be VAT registered or not, unless your revenue exceeds some limit (somewhere between £70,000 and £80,000 per year) where you must register for VAT.