EU business tax exemption base on VAT validation (VIES)

Accounting & Taxes
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Topic summary

EU merchants are frustrated by Shopify’s lack of native VAT number validation and automatic tax exemption for B2B customers during checkout, which is essential for EU regulatory compliance. Currently, businesses must rely on third-party apps or manual workarounds.

Core Issue:

  • No built-in field at checkout for customers to enter and validate their VAT ID via VIES (VAT Information Exchange System)
  • EU regulations require merchants to exempt VAT for validated business customers
  • Competitors (WooCommerce, PrestaShop, BigCommerce) offer this functionality natively

Current Workarounds:

  • Third-party apps like Exemptify, Sufio, and EUVAT.app (mentioned frequently)
  • Manual tax exemption in customer profiles (inefficient)
  • Forcing customers through cart page where apps can add VAT fields
  • Some merchants considering platform migration

Shopify’s Response:

  • Launched VAT Number Validation as part of Shopify Tax subscription
  • Feature only available to Shopify Tax users; no plans to support outside this paid service
  • VAT field appears in customer profiles or Company Locations (Plus plan), not at checkout

Community Reaction:

  • Merchants report losing 30-40% of B2B sales due to missing functionality
  • Multiple users calling this solution insufficient since customers cannot enter VAT during checkout
  • Ongoing frustration with Shopify’s approach of requiring expensive subscriptions or third-party apps for basic EU compliance
Summarized with AI on October 24. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
7

Big +1

I am migrating to woocommerce because of this.

Paying $50 bucks for Sufio for this functionality is a scam really.

It’s a basic thing and should not be paywalled like this.

+VIES validation + automatic VAT exemption on checkout.
It’s extremely frustrating. How hard can this be to implement?

3 Likes