Customer Tax IDs

Displaying a customer’s tax ID on invoice documents is a common requirement that you can satisfy by adding tax IDs to customers. A customer’s tax IDs display 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’re responsible for making sure that customer information is accurate (including their tax identification number). Stripe displays a customer tax ID on an invoice, regardless of whether or not it’s 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 automatically handles VIES downtime and attempts retries for you.

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

Stripe automatically validates 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 automatically handles HMRC downtime and attempts retries for you.

Validation webhooks and Dashboard display

Because this validation process happens asynchronously, the customer.tax_id.updated webhook notifies you of validation updates.

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

The Dashboard displays the results of the validation within the customer details, including information returned from the government databases, and the registered name and address.

When automatic validation isn’t available, you should manually verify these IDs.

Managing

You can manage tax IDs in the Customer page on the Dashboard, using the customer portal, or the Tax ID API.

Navigate to the Customer detail page and click Edit in the Details section. The Update customer modal opens, with the Tax ID section visible.

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

Remove a Tax ID from a customer by 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.