Customer Tax IDs

Displaying a customer’s tax ID on invoice documents is a common requirement.

With Stripe, you can add one or multiple tax IDs to a customer. A customer’s tax IDs are displayed in the header of invoice and credit note PDFs.

Supported Tax ID types

Currently, Stripe Billing supports the following Tax ID types in the following regions:

Validation

You are responsible for ensuring customer information, including their tax identification number, is accurate. Stripe will display a customer tax ID on an invoice, regardless of whether or not it is valid.

Stripe Billing provides automatic validation to help determine if formatting is correct. Stripe also provides automatic validation with government databases for the tax ID types below.

Australian Business Numbers (ABN)

Stripe automatically validates all Australian Business Numbers (ABNs) with the Australian Business Register (ABR).

European Value-Added-Tax (EU VAT) Numbers

Stripe also automatically validates all European Value-Added-Tax (EU VAT) numbers with the European Commission’s VAT Information Exchange System (VIES). This process only validates whether or not the tax ID is valid—you’ll still need to verify the customer’s name and address to make sure it matches the registration information.

VIES validation usually takes only a few seconds, but depending on the availability of various government databases, may take longer. Stripe will automatically handle VIES downtime and attempt retries for you.

United Kingdom Value-Added-Tax (GB VAT) Numbers

Stripe will automatically validate all UK Value-Added-Tax (GB VAT) numbers with the United Kingdom’s Revenue & Customs (HMRC). This process only validates whether or not the tax ID is valid—you’ll still need to verify the customer’s name and address to make sure it matches the registration information.

HMRC validation usually takes only a few seconds, but depending on the availability, may take longer. Stripe will automatically handle HMRC downtime and attempt retries for you.

Validation webhooks and Dashboard display

Because this validation process happens asynchronously, you will be notified of validation updates via the customer.tax_id.updated webhook.

Hover over a customer’s EU VAT number to display their VIES information.

The results of the validation are displayed in the Dashboard while displaying the customer details, including details returned from the government databases, as well as the registered name and address.

When automatic validation is not available, we strongly recommend that you manually verify these IDs.

Managing

Tax IDs can be managed via the Customer page on the Dashboard, via the Customer Portal, or via the Tax ID API.

The Customer detail page and Tax ID field.

Navigate to the Customer page, clicking the Update details button in the top of the Details panel. The Update customer invoice details modal will appear, with the Tax ID section visible.

Clicking the Add tax ID link will add a row to the Tax ID list, where you can select the ID type and value.

Removing a Tax ID from a customer is as simple as removing the row.

Using the API

You can add or delete Tax IDs using the API.

The following example shows how to create a new Tax ID on a Customer, storing their VAT number.

curl https://api.stripe.com/v1/customers/cus_4fdAW5ftNQow1a/tax_ids \
  -u 
sk_test_4eC39HqLyjWDarjtT1zdp7dc
: \
  -d "value"="DE123456789" \
  -d "type"="eu_vat"

You can delete a Tax ID, as shown in the this example:

curl https://api.stripe.com/v1/customers/cus_Euql8T6KrknXwN/tax_ids/txi_123456789 \
  -u 
sk_test_4eC39HqLyjWDarjtT1zdp7dc
: \
  -X "DELETE"

To update a Tax ID, delete the old ID and create another.