Tax basics

How is an EU VAT number validated?

VIES confirms the reported validity status; the result and timestamp should be retained.

VIES queries the status supplied by EU Member States for a VAT number. A valid result supports B2B classification but does not replace checks of contract, recipient and actual use.

Retain the result

Store number, country, timestamp, outcome and available reference data. A technical outage must not automatically be treated as an invalid number.

Mismatches

If VAT country, legal name, billing address or contract do not align, manual clarification is required.