How can you verify VAT numbers for a VIES report?

I came across this very useful EU website, where you can validate the VAT number of any company in the EU.  For VIES reports it’s a must. Just follow the instructions and leave no spaces between the VAT numbers. Just choose from the drop down menu’s. You enter your own companies VAT number and choose the country where your company is registered. Then enter the VAT number of the company you are looking to validate.

You can check one EU country at a time, which I found useful. It saves you having to re set the drop down menu each time you check for a vat number in a particular EU country.

We use this ourselves for our VIES reporting – so we hope you will find it useful too.

VAT Numbers – normally have the following formats:

Germany    DE + 9 numeric characters
Austria       AT + 9 numeric and alphanumeric characters
Belgium    BE + 9 numeric characters
Denmark  DK + 8 numeric characters
Spain         ES + 9 characters
Finland     FI + 8 numeric characters
France     FR + 2 figures (informatic key) + N° SIREN (9 figures)
United-Kingdom GB + 9 numeric characters
Greece     EL + 9 numeric characters
Ireland    IE + 8 numeric and alphabetic characters
Italy        IT + 11 numeric characters
Luxembourg LU + 8 numeric characters
Netherlands NL + 12 alphanumeric characters, one of them a letter
Portugal PT + 9 numeric characters
Sweden SE + 12 numeric characters