The importance of checking VRNs and the impact it can have on your business

Validating a single VAT registration number (VRN) is the sort of task it can be easy to disregard as a tax professional.

After all, it’s so incredibly simple. You log on to the European Commission’s VAT Information Exchange System (VIES) – and since Brexit, the UK’s HMRC platform to check VRNs for British businesses – to enter the VRN of a new customer or supplier and are informed if it is valid or not.

But what if you need to check thousands of VRNs each day? And what happens if you get it wrong?

To further add to the complexity of the issue, there’s often ambiguity around whose responsibility within the business it should be to check VRNs. Should it be Procurement (often meaning it’s only checked once) or should it be down to the Transaction Processing team? Or perhaps you’re lucky enough to have a Master Data team? Maybe your Shared Service Centre allow for this to become a regular process?

That’s when checking VRNs changes from a menial task you’d rather forget into a business-critical process that has the potential to spell disaster for those who get it wrong.

Source Innovate tax

See also Tools offered to verify VAT registration numbers

 

 

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