What’s New at Shopify?

Merchants on Shopify Tax are able to input and validate buyer VAT numbers directly within admin. Shopify connects to both VIES and HMRC, validating buyer VAT numbers in every European Union (EU) country and the United Kingdom (UK). If a buyer’s VAT number is valid, the reverse charge exemption will be automatically added to the company location or customer settings and applied on qualifying orders.

When applied, a reverse charge note will now be present on VAT invoices generated by Shopify Tax.

What’s changed?

When a buyer VAT number is entered within company, company locations or customers, it will now be checked for validity. Merchants will see a status under the field (invalid, valid, service unavailable). Note that this may take up to 10 seconds due to the latency of government APIs.

If the number is valid, the buyer will automatically have the reverse charge exemption applied to their settings.

How do you use it?

Learn how to add and validate VAT numbers for companies and customers in the Help Center.

Be sure to check your admin locations: now that the reverse charge exemption includes the UK, the reverse charge exemption will not be applied if a merchant has a default location outside of the EU.

Note that in all cases, if the country selected for your buyer is not within the European Union or United Kingdom, the field will present as “Tax ID” and offer no validation.