We noticed that most freelancers who invoice across EU borders do not realize that a missing buyer VAT number can make them personally liable for the VAT. It is not a scare tactic — it is written into EU Directive 2006/112/EC. If you issue a zero-rated invoice to a business buyer in another member state and their VAT number turns out to be invalid, the tax authority can come after you for the unpaid VAT. We have heard from three freelancers who learned this lesson the hard way after cross-border audits. The VIES verification process takes about thirty seconds and gives you a confirmation record you can keep with your invoice files. I do it for every single cross-border invoice, and I have never had an issue.
For UK businesses post-Brexit, remember that VAT treatment differs for goods versus services. Goods imported from the EU are subject to UK import VAT at the point of entry, while cross-border services may still qualify for the Reverse Charge mechanism if both parties are VAT-registered businesses. The mandatory fields are: seller VAT number, buyer VAT number, tax point date, a unique invoice number, a line-by-line breakdown of goods or services, the applicable VAT rate per line, and the total amount payable. One e-commerce seller we work with ships artisanal coffee from London to customers in France and Germany. He told us that adding the Reverse Charge disclaimer and verifying buyer VAT numbers reduced his customs clearance time from an average of 4 days to under 24 hours.