How do you check VAT IDs in UK?

Alexandre Savio

Checking VAT IDs is a crucial step of tax compliance when selling B2B.

B2B customers can provide false VAT IDs so they can avoid paying consumption tax on their purchases. In the UK as well as EU, it’s your responsibility to verify that these business VAT IDs are valid.

If you don’t check the validity of customers’ VAT IDs, and if you apply the reverse-charge mechanism to a sale where the buyer has a fake VAT ID, then you'll be liable to pay the VAT tax directly.

How to verify a British VAT ID manually?

You can use the UK.GOV system.

UK.GOV verification Great Britain

UK.GOV verification Great Britain result

Check automatically with API and bulk verification

With Askfino you can verify VAT IDs in real-time using our API.

In Askfino we need to know the country code of the VAT ID you want to check. In this case, the country code is GB.

A response for VAT ID GB333289454 would look like this:

{
  "id": "0184df3010980e6c8da9b081226b5eab",
  "company_address": "BROADCASTING HOUSE, FLOOR 6 (ZONE B/C), PORTLAND PLACE, W1A 1AA",
  "company_name": "BRITISH BROADCASTING CORPORATION",
  "country": "GB",
  "created_at": "2022-12-04T22:09:39.993177Z",
  "external_id": "",
  "status": "VERIFIED",
  "valid_format": true,
  "vat_id": "GB333289454",
  "verification_number": "",
  "verified": true,
  "verified_at": "2022-12-04T22:09:40.207070Z"
}

If you have many VAT IDs to verify you can use the bulk verification. Upload a list or a CSV file and start the validation process directly inside our dashboard.

Askfino Bulk import

Once finished, you’ll be notified via email with a report containing the result of the VAT ID checks.

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