SkipTax - Tax Free Shopping

Easy to scan photos. If vendor isn’t a partner you have to request SkipTax receipt which we sometimes forgot to do. Very confusing at Pablo kiosk in Gare du Nord and staff wasn’t helpful. But I did eventually figure it out it did work and I did get my refund so alls well that ends well.

I’m used to the “old school” filling out the form and mail it in and wait and wait and wait for a check to be mailed. I used this for the first time yesterday. I scanned the form at the airport and they sent my refund via PayPal in less than 24 hours. Yes, they take a fee, but it’s well worth it.

I have been detaxing in France since the 80's. Initially, none of these companies that stores are using existed. You were getting the full tax refund! the method was simple. The store where you made your purchase would take a check, or a print of your credit card, for the amount of the tax. Once you got your customs stamp, you would send the document by mail to the store, and they would discard the tax payment. As the number of tourists increased, this method stopped being efficient. This is when the companies that reimburse you started to be created. Now, they reimburse you less than SkipTax, because they give back some of the tax refund to the store, for using their services. Because SkipTax does not require a specific "Detax" service from the store, they only take 20% of the full tax refund, which is still a fair amount given that you are doing everything. Pros: -faster transactions as you do not need to go to the specific "Detaxe" service of the store, or need to fill in fastidious forms, or need to show your documents to people. -you can still do detaxe in a store that does not propose "detaxe" service. Because all you need is an invoice. -Faster "customs" validation since you only need to have bar codes on your phone, and you do not need to carry any paper documentation. -SkipTax claim they reimburse you immediately, but this was not my experience. It took about one week before I got all the money on my PayPal account. -Sponsorship perks. If you get some of your friends to use SkipTax, you get additional percent points, punctual or permanent. Cons: -Although SkipTax says you only need to scan the invoice and your are done, it is not exactly true. They asked me to scan the purchase tickets, the goods with my name and a date, and also required clarification on the nature of the goods purchased. -Scanning invoices with a phone can be tedious. My phone hasn't got a good camera, and I needed many attempts before my invoices could be scanned and readable. -PayPal is the only method to get your money back. No cash of any sort. -My biggest gripe! no customer service; at all! they have a chatbot with pre-defined answers that never cover what you want to know. I would recommend using SkipTax, because the major advantage, is that you can do detaxe in stores that don't normally offer it.