Yes, within time limits, and it is regularly missed. For goods you still hold at registration — stock, equipment, tools, a laptop — you can reclaim VAT on purchases made in the four years before registration, provided they were bought by the same legal entity for business purposes and you still have them. For services, the window is six months before registration. The goods must still be on hand: you cannot reclaim on stock you already sold. This gets forgotten because it lives on the first return, at the exact moment a newly registered business is most preoccupied with getting the basics right, and there is no prompt to remind you. For a business that has been trading a while before crossing the threshold, it can be a meaningful sum.