The structures of hydrated phosphoric acid and phosphate ions (H2PO4-, HPO42- and PO43-) in aqueous solution have been determined by P K-edge EXAFS and large angle X-ray scattering (LAXS). The P-O bond distance in all phosphate species studied is close to 1.53 Å. The P-(O)⋅⋅⋅Oaq distances have been refined to ca. 3.6 Å from the LAXS data giving a P-O⋅⋅⋅Oaq bond angle close to tetrahedral suggesting that each oxygen or OH group of phosphoric acid and dihydrogenphosphate, on average, hydrogen bind three water molecules. The (P-)O(-H)···Oaq and (P-)O···(H-)Oaq hydrogen bonds in hydrated phos-phoric acid and the H2PO4- ion are shorter than the hydrogen bonds in neat water. This supports previous infrared spectro-scopic studies claiming that the hydrogen bonds in hydrated phosphoric acid and phosphate ions are stronger than the hy-drogen bonds in neat water. Phosphoric acid and phosphate ions can therefore be regarded as structure making solutes. This is the first study applying transmission mode X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) data collection on the P K-edge. It shows that XAS spectra collected in transmission mode have a much better S/N ratio than data collected in fluorescence mode, allowing accurate determination of P-O bond distances. Furthermore, P K-edge EXAFS data collected in fluorescence mode display a higher amplitude at high k than expected due to increasing radiated volume of the sample with increasing energy as the total absorption decreases sharply with increasing energy of the X-rays. As a result, the fluorescence signal becomes non-proportional to the intensity of the X-ray beam over the EXAFS spectrum. This results in an increasing amplitude of the EXAFS function with increasing energy of the X-ray beam resulting in too small Debye-Waller coefficients.