At my company, we recently placed an order with Sainsburys online delivery service for some provisions for the office. When we phoned them up and asked them for a VAT receipt, they replied that it is not their policy to issue them.
Now obviously 99% of Sainsburys' customers don't care two hoots about accounting for the VAT on what they buy, but as a business, we are in the other 1%. And it's not as if we could just easily figure out what the VAT amount is because there is a bewildering mixture of VAT exempt and standard rated items.
Am I right in thinking that they are legally obliged to supply a VAT receipt if we ask them to?
Adam