Check an EU VAT number: what VIES really proves

Direct answer

VIES queries the tax database of your customer's Member State in real time and states whether their VAT number is valid for intra-Community transactions. Since 1 January 2020 that validity is no longer a formality: it is a substantive condition for the exemption of your intra-Community supplies.

The consequence fits in one sentence. An invalid number, or a check you cannot evidence, and the transaction becomes taxable in Luxembourg.

Two substantive conditions, not one

Article 138 of Directive 2006/112/EC, as amended by Directive (EU) 2018/1910, makes the exemption subject to two cumulative conditions. The customer must be VAT-identified in another Member State and must have communicated that number to you. And the supplier must have filed a recapitulative statement containing the correct information for the supply.

The text contains a safety valve many overlook: the exemption is denied for a defective recapitulative statement only where the supplier cannot duly justify the shortcoming. An error spotted and corrected on your own initiative is not treated like an omission found during an audit. The correction must go through the dedicated boxes of the next VAT return, not through a full re-filing.

Proof of transport remains a separate condition. Article 45a of Implementing Regulation (EU) No 282/2011 sets out rebuttable presumptions, not a mandatory standard: the documents must come from two parties independent of each other, of the vendor and of the acquirer. Where the acquirer arranges transport, the vendor must also hold a written statement from that acquirer, by the tenth day of the month following the supply. This is the most common failure point in Ex Works arrangements.

VIES keeps no history

A poorly understood point with heavy consequences. VIES answers in the present tense, never the past. It states whether a number is active at the moment of the query and returns no earlier periods of validity.

In practice, a number valid in 2024 and deactivated since will return "invalid" today, with no mention that it was in order when you made your supply. The service is not a standalone database: it queries national registers, and it is each Member State's authority, the AED for a Luxembourg number, that holds the issue date, amendments and deregistration date.

A check run today therefore proves nothing about your customer's taxable status at a past date. What you did not record at the time of the transaction cannot be reconstructed during an audit.

The consultation number, the only timestamped trace

The VIES form has two blocks. The first carries the number to be checked. The second, apparently optional, carries your own Member State and your own VAT number.

Filling in that second block changes the nature of the evidence: the service then returns a consultation number, the requestIdentifier field through the API. Leave the requester fields empty and the validation still runs, but no identifier is issued. All you keep is a screenshot, reproducible and unauthenticated.

Your file should contain, per counterparty and per period: the number checked with its country prefix, the date and time, the consultation number, the name and address where the Member State discloses them, and the link to the invoice concerned. Invoice copies must be kept for ten years in Luxembourg: align the retention of your evidence with that period, not with your invoicing tool's default.

Reading the result correctly

A "valid" answer with name and address lets you reconcile identity against your commercial documents. A valid answer without identity is the case in several Member States, Germany and Spain among them, which do not disclose that data: complete the file with a local register extract or a certificate of taxable status.

The costliest confusion is between "invalid" and "service unavailable". The latter signals a national database under maintenance, not a registration defect. Concluding too fast leads to charging local VAT out of caution, which damages the commercial relationship and complicates the correction.

Rule out data entry errors first. Greece uses the EL prefix, not GR. British numbers have not been in VIES since Brexit, except Northern Ireland XI numbers, which carry 9 or 12 digits: a syntax filter set to 9 characters wrongly rejects valid numbers.

A special case since 1 January 2025: small businesses opting into the cross-border exemption scheme receive a number with the EX suffix. It is not checked in VIES but in SME-on-the-Web, the Commission's dedicated tool, and it does not allow the sale to be treated as an exempt intra-Community supply. Check this at VAT registration of your counterparties.

What a valid answer does not prove

It establishes that a number was active at a given moment. It does not establish that your counterparty holds it, impersonation being the classic entry point of carousel fraud, nor that the goods left the territory, nor that the transaction sits outside a fraudulent chain.

The Teleos, Mecsek-Gabona and Italmoda line of case law requires refusing the exemption to an operator who knew, or should have known, that it was taking part in fraud, even where every formal condition is met. The check is a floor, not a ceiling.

The signals that call for enhanced diligence are well known: an unusually large order on the first transaction, delivery requested to a country other than the State of registration, payment by a third party, an abnormally thin margin on high unit-value goods, a contact reachable only by messaging.

The procedure we put in place

Check and identity reconciliation when the customer account is opened. A check before every exempt invoice, automated through the API beyond roughly fifty active counterparties. Monthly revalidation of the portfolio, because a registration can be withdrawn mid-relationship without the customer telling you.

The most frequent break point sits elsewhere than in the check itself. Companies verify correctly, then file through eCDF a recapitulative statement built from an accounting extract that does not carry the same numbers as the invoices. The substantive condition falls despite flawless checks. Reconciling invoicing against the recapitulative statement is a control in its own right.

Then there is the horizon. The ViDA package will replace recapitulative statements with digital reporting and withdraw VIES in its current form: we set out that timeline in our analysis on Luxembourg VAT in 2026. A clean customer master file will be required either way, and it costs far less to build in normal times than under deadline pressure. Our tax advisors frame that path with you.

This article sets out the framework as it stands at the publication date. Thresholds, directives and tools change; any individual decision should be assessed against your own situation.