Can a usa web site charge vat on uk purchases?

i went to buy something from a usa company who use a usa payment proccessor, using a visa card which works in us dollars. surely this company cant give me a valid uk vat number to claim back from? are they just trying to add to the transaction total hoping people dont question it?

Thanx 4 replying graham. thats great info. does the EU apply to the 'sates though? Its not a big amount of money involved, but maybee thats the point, as they feel people wont question it. Theres a lot of boxes to UN tick (the so called download back up, the back up cd by post, etc) to bring a 50$ purchase up to a 99$ purchase. is so called "vat" one of them?

Since 2003 all digital sales made in the EU are liable to VAT.

Any company selling more than about 拢70,000 of goods in all the EU countries combined is required to charge and account for VAT no matter where they are situated.

I won't purchase anything through Clickbank because they always add VAT because they are the reseller of all the products they list, so their sales are over the threshold.

The crazy thing is that if you put US as the country in their billing system and then elect to pay by Paypal their technology doesn't pick up where you are from and doesn't charge the VAT.

They need to install technology to interact with the IP addresses so EU customers are charged correctly.