VAT identification number (VAT ID) check

If you do business with entrepreneurs, it’s important to know if they have a valid VAT identification number (VAT ID). Make sure to check your clients' VAT IDs.

You can check your clients’ VAT ID on the European Commission’s website. You can check VAT IDs for entrepreneurs in the Netherlands and other EU countries.

In addition to the validity of the VAT ID, you can also check your client’s name and address. Is the VAT ID not valid, or do the name and address not match? Contact your client about the correct details.

Checking VAT ID if you’re doing business in other EU countries

By checking the VAT ID, you are making sure that your client is an entrepreneur. For example, if you’re doing business in other EU countries with an entrepreneur who needs to file a VAT tax return.
If that is the case and you supply goods that are transported to another EU country, you generally charge 0% VAT. If you are providing services, you can often reverse charge the VAT to the client.
To be able to do this, you need to be sure that your client is an entrepreneur. If it turns out not to be the case, you could receive an additional assessment and a fine. Additionally, you would still need to pay the VAT on the goods and services that you  supplied without charging VAT.

This is how you check your client’s VAT ID, name and address

1. Go to the European Commission’s website.
2. Fill in your client’s EU country.
3. Fill in your client’s VAT identification number.
4. Optional: fill in your EU country.
5. Optional: fill in your VAT identification number
6. Click ‘Verify’
7. Do you want to keep the result? Save it to your computer.

Does the check not work?

Remove the applicant’s EU country and VAT ID from the bottom part and try again. The system is sensitive to capitalisation, you can’t fill in capital letters as lower case letters. Sometimes it still does not work after these adjustments. In that case, it’s possible that the system is temporarily out of order. Unfortunately, we don’t have any influence on this, because it is an EU system. Try again later.

Read more about this check in the Frequently Asked Questions.