The short version
VIES — the VAT Information Exchange System — is a search engine run by the European Commission that lets any person or business verify, in real time, whether a VAT identification number issued by any EU member state is valid for intra-community (cross-border) transactions.
It is the only source of authoritative, free, pan-EU VAT validation. Every commercial VAT validation service, including VAT-Scan, ultimately relies on VIES data.
Why VIES exists
The EU Single Market allows zero-rated VAT on B2B sales of goods and services between VAT-registered businesses in different member states. Without verification, this regime would be wide open to fraud: sellers could zero-rate invoices to fake "businesses", depriving member state treasuries of revenue.
VIES was introduced in 1993 alongside the Single Market to give sellers a way to check — and document — that a buyer's claimed VAT number is real and currently valid. Crucially, it is also what tax authorities use during audits to confirm the seller exercised proper due diligence before applying zero-rate VAT.
How VIES works under the hood
VIES is not a single EU-wide database. Instead, it is a federated routing system: when you submit a VAT number, the European Commission's VIES endpoint forwards the query to the national tax administration database of the issuing country. That national system checks its own records and returns a response, which VIES then hands back to you.
This architecture has important practical consequences:
- Each country is independent. If Italy's database is offline for maintenance, Italian VAT numbers cannot be validated — but French, German, and Spanish numbers still work.
- Data quality varies. Some countries return the registered company name and address; others (notably Germany) deliberately withhold those details under national data-protection laws.
- Response time varies. A fast national system might reply in under 100 ms; a slow one can take several seconds.
- New registrations lag. A newly registered VAT number may not appear in VIES immediately — some countries propagate updates daily, others weekly.
What a VIES response actually contains
A successful VIES lookup returns:
- Validity flag —
trueorfalse - Country code and VAT number — echoed back for confirmation
- Request date — the timestamp of the query
- Company name — when published by the member state
- Company address — when published by the member state
- Consultation number — an optional reference ID you can quote in an audit to prove you performed the check (requires you to submit your own VAT number alongside the query)
Why VIES matters for your business
- Zero-rating compliance. If you invoice a customer in another EU country at 0% VAT on the basis of their VAT number, you must be able to prove you verified that number was valid on (or about) the invoice date.
- Audit protection. Tax authorities can retroactively demand the unpaid VAT if it turns out a buyer's number was invalid at the time of supply. A VIES check creates a documented audit trail.
- Fraud prevention. Missing-trader / carousel fraud costs EU member states tens of billions of euros per year. VIES is the first line of defence.
- Reverse charge. For B2B services taxed under the reverse charge mechanism (Article 196 of the VAT Directive), the buyer's VAT number validity determines who is liable for the VAT.
Limitations to be aware of
VIES is powerful, but it is not a silver bullet:
- It only tells you whether a VAT number exists and is flagged for intra-community trade. It does not tell you whether the business behind it is trustworthy, solvent, or real.
- It does not include GB (UK) numbers since Brexit — use HMRC for those.
- Some member states (Germany, Spain for certain entities) redact name/address fields.
- The upstream service has no published SLA and can go down during maintenance windows, typically announced on the EU taxation portal.
Try it now
Head back to VAT-Scan and run a live VIES query. Or see our full format guide to check the structure of a VAT number before validating it.