Checking an EU VAT number in VIES: what valid really means

The sixty-second check

1. Go to the official checker at ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/vies. Free, no account.
2. Pick the supplier's country and enter the number without the country prefix. Formats differ by country (DE plus nine digits, NL plus nine digits B two digits, FR plus two characters and nine digits, and so on); the checker rejects malformed numbers immediately.
3. If your own business has an EU VAT number, enter it in the requester field. VIES then returns a consultation number: dated, citable proof that you ran the check.
4. Read the result: valid or invalid, and, for most member states, the registered name and address to compare with your supplier's paperwork.

What a valid result actually proves

Exactly one thing: at the moment of the check, that number was registered for cross-border (intra-EU) transactions in the relevant national database. That is genuinely useful, and much narrower than it sounds.

• It does not prove the person invoicing you controls that VAT number. Real VAT numbers of real companies are routinely pasted onto fraudulent invoices. VIES cannot see who sent you the PDF.
• It says nothing about solvency, delivery record, or honesty.
• Some member states return no name or address at all. Germany is the big one: a valid DE number comes back with no identifying details, so for German suppliers a VIES "valid" cannot even be tied to a company name without checking the register separately.
• Invalid does not always mean fake. Some businesses are VAT-registered only domestically and do not appear in VIES, and national databases update with delays. Individual member-state services also go down; when the checker says a state's service is unavailable, try again later rather than concluding anything.
• UK numbers are no longer in VIES. Check them with HMRC's Check a UK VAT number service instead.

Use VIES as one consistency check among several: the number is valid, the returned name (where the state provides one) is consistent with the company register, and the number on the invoice is identical to the one you checked. The register checks are covered in our guides for the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, and France.

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