Account and customer tax IDs with Invoicing

With Stripe, you can manage tax IDs ​​for both yourself and your customers. Both the account and customer tax IDs display in the header of invoice and credit note PDFs.

Account tax IDs

Displaying your tax IDs on invoice documents is a common regulatory requirement.

With Stripe, you can add up to 25 tax IDs to your account. You can see your tax IDs in the header of invoice and credit note PDFs. You can:

• Select a default tax ID to appear on every invoice and credit note PDF.
• Define a list of tax IDs to appear on a specific invoice.

Managing account tax IDs

You can add and delete tax IDs using the invoice template settings page in the Dashboard. After you add a tax ID in the Dashboard, you can set it as the default tax ID for every invoice and credit note PDF. Tax IDs are immutable—you can’t change the country and ID after you save the tax ID to your account.

To display multiple tax IDs on an invoice, you can use the API or the Invoice Editor to specify which tax IDs to show.

Adding and removing IDs

Visit the invoice template settings page. Scroll down to the Manage tax information section to add a new tax ID or remove an existing tax ID:

Setting a default tax ID

On the invoice template settings page, scroll down to Manage tax information and locate the tax ID you want to set as the default. Click the more (…) menu and select Set as default.

​​After you set a tax ID as the default, you can see a label in the tax information box:

Displaying multiple tax IDs on invoices

Using the Dashboard

You can set a list of tax IDs in the Dashboard using the Invoice Editor. ​​You can’t modify account tax IDs after an Invoice has been finalized.

In the Invoice Editor, scroll down to the Advanced Options section. Click the checkboxes to toggle which tax IDs ​​to display on that invoice. To remove tax IDs from the invoice, uncheck the boxes.

Using the API

After you add a tax ID to your account, you can use the API to specify up to 25 tax IDs for an individual invoice. ​​You can add account tax IDs when creating a new invoice using the invoice create endpoint by passing a list of object IDs to the account_tax_ids parameter.

​​You can remove, change, or add account tax IDs on an existing invoice using the invoice update endpoint by passing a list of object IDs to the account_tax_ids parameter.

Customer tax IDs

Collecting and displaying a customer’s tax ID on an invoice is a common requirement for B2B sales. With Stripe, you can add up to five tax IDs to a customer. You can see a customer’s tax IDs in the header of invoice and credit note PDFs. You can collect a tax ID with Stripe Checkout, or pass us a tax ID directly.

Supported tax ID types

Currently, Stripe supports the following tax ID types in the following regions:

Validation

It’s your responsibility to make sure customer information is accurate (including their tax ID). Stripe displays a customer tax ID on an invoice, whether or not it is valid.

Stripe checks the format of the tax ID against the expected format, and asynchronously validates the tax ID against the external tax authority system 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 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 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 may take longer, depending on the availability of the external tax authority system. Stripe will automatically handle VIES downtime and attempt 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 verifies that the tax ID is valid—you 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 may take longer, depending on the availability. 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.

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

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

Managing customer tax IDs

You can manage tax IDs in the Customers page on the Dashboard, in the Customer Portal, or with the API.

Using the Dashboard

To add a customer tax ID in the Dashboard, navigate to the Customers page, and click Update details in the top of the Details panel. The Update customer invoice details modal opens, with the tax ID section visible.

Clicking the Add tax ID link adds a row to the tax ID list, where you can select the ID type and value. Removing the row removes a tax ID from a customer.

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_4fdAW5ftNQow1a/tax_ids/txi_123456789 \
 -u 
sk_test_4eC39HqLyjWDarjtT1zdp7dc
: \
 -X DELETE

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