Businesses require a German VAT number when they carry out the supply of goods or services taxed with VAT, make intra-EU acquisition of goods, receive services for which they are liable to pay VAT or supply services for which the recipient is liable to pay VAT.

Among other things, the VAT number must be indicated in the recapulative statement and is required for the validation query of a VAT number.

An assignment of the VAT number by the BZSt is done under the condition that, at the time of the application, your status as business within the meaning of Section 2 of the VAT Act is proven.

This proof is provided by the transmission of the required data from the relevant German tax office to the BZSt. The data transmission is done automatically as soon as the registration of the business is processed. If you determine that the data transmitted by the tax office is incorrect or incomplete, please contact your tax office. The BZSt uses the data stored at the german tax office and cannot correct or complete it.

You have the following options for applying for a VAT number:

• Registration
  Foreign businesses must be registered in Germany before applying for a German VAT number. To do so, you can check here which tax office is responsible for your country of origin. You can request the VAT number directly while registering at the tax office.
• Online application (It is available in German language only)
  You can apply for the VAT number using the online application.
• In writing
  The application must be submitted by e-mail via the contact form or in writing to:
  
  Bundeszentralamt für Steuern
  Dienstsitz Saarlouis
  66738 Saarlouis
  GERMANY

The assignment of a VAT number is done following an application (Section 27a (1) of the VAT Act). The law provides for two options for this:

a.) For online application, the BZSt provides a form via the Form Management System (FMS) of the German Federal Government (It is available in German language only).

For online application, the following data must be provided:

• German tax office responsible for the taxation of the company,
• German tax number under which the company is registered,
• Legal form of the company,
• For sole proprietorships, the last name, the first name, and the date of birth of the taxable company owner must be indicated,
• For all other legal forms, the name of the company, the postal code and the city (company headquarters) must be indicated.

After transmission, the information is automatically compared with the data sent by the tax authorities to the BZSt and checked for congruence. You will receive information regarding the status of automated processing directly after sending.

b.) If applying in writing (paper or electronic) the application must include:

• Name and address of the company
• German tax office under which the company is registered for value-added tax purposes
• German tax number under which the company is registered

Please note that, in order to prevent an abusive request of a VAT number, the BZSt is obligated to compare the data you have provided in your application with the existing address data to make sure they match. In accordance with Section 27a (2) of the VAT Act, the BZSt receives from the relevant state tax authorities (tax offices) the data required for the assignment of a VAT number on the natural persons, legal entities, and association of persons registered with them for VAT purposes. In order to achieve the best possible success with the congruence check, you should therefore utilize your latest notice of assessment or the notification of the tax number and compare the address data included therein. If the data differs or has changed, please contact your tax office.

The notification of a newly assigned or of an already existing, valid VAT number is done exclusively by regular mail not electronically.

As a general rule, the VAT number is sent to the company address stored at the tax office. If there is a power of representation registered the notification is sent to this person, for instance a tax consultant.
However, as part of online application, the notification of the assigned VAT number is sent only to the company itself.

In case you have more than one business or several forms of self-employment, you will receive only one VAT number for the entire company (corporate unit).

The business includes your entire professional activity.

Businesses based abroad who are not yet registered with a German tax office for value-added tax purposes must first contact the tax office that is responsible for them in order to be registered for value-added tax purposes.

You will find the relevant tax offices for your country of origin here.

When you register for tax purposes with the Germantax office, you can also apply for issuance of a VAT number using the tax registration form. In this case an additional application with BZSt is not necessary.

The VAT number only applies for corporate use.

For instance, if entrepreneur business acquires goods or services for purposes that are not corporate (e.g. as a private person on vacation), the goods or other services remain subject to the foreign value-added tax.

To receive a new/updated notification letter by simply filling out the online application form again. The system will process any application when a number is already allocated as a request for a new notification of this number. Your VAT number remains unchanged. You will receive the letter by mail only. It is not possible to get this information electronically or via phone (It is available in German language only).

Address for the VAT number

You can request the modification of your address data only from the German tax office where you are registered for VAT purposes. The BZSt cannot change your data and cannot forward your modification wish to your tax office.

The modified data is automatically transmitted to the BZSt. You do not need to send any additional notification to the BZSt.

The amended data is automatically transmitted by the tax office to the BZSt. Some time may pass between receipt of your change request by the tax office and transmission of the changed data to the BZSt. You can use the online application form as means of receiving an updated letter of notification (see FAQ: What should I do if I have forgotten/misplaced my VAT number?)

No. VAT numbers are exclusively assigned by the BZSt.

The BZSt does not charge any fees for this.

The prerequisite for validity is that the company is registered with the relevant tax office as a company within the meaning of Section 2 of the VAT Act.

In order to make your invalid VAT ID No. valid again, please

• contact your relevant tax office.
  The necessary information for your value-added tax registration is automatically transferred by the tax office to the BZSt. Some time may pass between the receipt of your request for modification at the tax office and the transmission of the modified data to the BZSt.
• You can then request current proof of your assigned VAT number after filling out and sending the application form. You will receive said proof via postal mail.

The start date of the validity of the VAT number is the date of the letter of notification.

The validity of the VAT number ends when

• the business requests its termination from the BZSt or
• the bisuness is no longer registered with the relevant tax office for value-added tax purposes.

The validation procedure enables businesses to check whether or not, at the time of the request the business partner is registered in the EU for VAT purposes.

With a simple validation, you receive information as to whether a foreign VAT number is valid in the member state that has issued it at the time of the query.

For technical reasons a simple validation must be carried out before a qualified validation.

With a qualified validation, you can additionally query whether the data you have provided regarding

• the company name (including the legal form),
• the town/city,
• the postal code,
• the street/house no.,

match the data stored in the business file of the respective EU member state.

In its answer, the BZSt merely communicates the data stored in another member state regarding the queried company. Questions regarding legal considerations and tax consequences (for instance, tax exemption of the intra-Community supply of goods/service) must be addressed to your tax office.

Validation queries via the online query/interface rely on the same database as validations made by telephone or in writing.

If the query is completely impossible or impossible only for certain member states, for example due to maintenance work, you should try to perform the validation at a later time.

In the event of longer outages of the validation procedure, please observe the updated information on the online query website (it is available in German language only).

No, the BZSt does not charge any fees.

No, it is not possible to perform validations for times or periods of time in the past.

The validation procedure makes it easier for businesses with a German VAT number to check whether, at the time of request, the provision of goods and services was provided to entrepreneur business who is registered for tax purposesin another EU member state.

The status of the recipient must be proven in order for a supply of goods to be treated as tax-exempt, provided the other conditions are fulfilled.

For other services, providing documentary evidence of the customer’s business status, may make it possible to shift the tax liability to the customer (reverse charge procedure), provided that other conditions are also fulfilled.

Every holder of a German VAT number is authorized to make such a query.

Your own German VAT number must always be indicated during the query.

There are two options for performing a validation query:

I. Multiple Query

The BZSt offers you the option of integrating the query of the VAT number through an interface with your own software system and automatically querying the VAT number.

After the one-time setup, the interface will facilitate the query of foreign VAT numbers since manual entry is no longer necessary.

For queries via the interface, the electronic answer provided by the BZSt in the form of a data set can be directly integrated and analyzed in the company system. Proof of a performed qualified query must be provided in the data set received by the BZSt (see also German VAT Application Decree Paragraph 18e.1).

The BZSt does not send validation notices in paper form.

You will find further information on the interface here (it is available in German language only).

II. Single Query

An online query is available to you for single queries.

For queries via internet, proof of a performed qualified validation query must be provided via the retention of the printout or the takeover of the results communicated by the BZSt in a common format or as a screenshot in the company’s system (see also German VAT Application Decree Paragraph 18e.1).

The BZSt does not send validation notices in paper form.

You will find further information on the online query here (It is available in German language only).

Information about the structure of foreign VAT numbers can be found in this leaflet (It is available in German language only).

Please contact your business partner and have them provide you with the correct data. It is not possible for the BZSt to disclose the data registered in the business database of the respective EU member state.

Spelling mistakes, transposed letters or entering special characters does not usually result in a "no match" message. Please check directly with your business partner if the data provided by them is consistent with the data recorded in their member state.
If your business partner is not sure about what data has been recorded, he can contact the competent authority in his country and ask what data has been recorded for the business.

Only your business partner is permitted to change or amend the data with the competent authority in the respective member state.

The BZSt only confirms to companies with a German VAT number the validity of VAT numbers issued by another EU member state (Section 18e (1) of the VAT Act).

All EU member states have a central authority responsible for confirming the validity of foreign value-added tax identification numbers. Your business partner can obtain validation of your German VAT number from said authority.