Checking a Belgian VAT number, before you pay

A Belgian VAT number is the enterprise number with "BE" in front: ten digits starting with 0 or 1, usually printed as BE 0123.456.789. The dots and spaces are decoration — the ten digits are the number, and the form above accepts every common spelling of them.

You will find it on the quote, on the invoice, in the footer of the company's emails, and often at the bottom of its website. A Belgian business must state its enterprise number on every document it issues, so a quote with no number on it is a document to question before anything else about it.

Very old paperwork sometimes shows a nine-digit VAT number. Those were extended to ten digits with a leading zero years ago; add the zero and the number reads normally.

The Crossroads Bank for Enterprises (KBO/CBE) answers whether the company exists: its name, its legal form, its address, its registered activities, and whether it is active, stopped, or in an insolvency procedure.

VIES, the European Commission's interface, answers a narrower question: is this number, today, active for VAT? The answer is live and it is dated, and it says nothing about health, quality, or size.

The two answers are independent. A perfectly lawful company can exist in the KBO/CBE without an active VAT number — the exemption scheme for small businesses is the usual reason — and a check worth doing reads both registers, which is what the form on this page does.

The check lists what each register said, line by line, with the source and the date it was read. The headline is a count of checks passed and flags raised — never a score, and never the word "safe": a register records facts, and a verdict is not one of them.

A "valid" from VIES means the number was active for VAT on the day you asked. It does not mean the invoice is correct, the price is fair, or the company is solvent — those live in other registers and other documents, and some of them live nowhere public at all.

For a sole trader — and most Belgian construction firms are sole traders — the register entry is personal data, and Domara currently answers those lookups with an explanation rather than a report. The check page says so in plain words when it happens; it is a legal boundary, not a missing company.

A company that charges VAT must hold a valid VAT number and show it on the invoice. An amount of VAT under a number that VIES does not recognise is an invoice to have corrected before payment, whatever the explanation turns out to be.

An invoice without VAT is not in itself abnormal: a company under the small-business exemption scheme invoices without VAT and says so on the document. What matters is that the document and the register tell the same story.

For renovation work on a private home, the rate is its own question — 6% under the FPS Finance conditions for homes at least ten years old, 21% otherwise — and since 2022 it is the contractor who justifies the reduced rate on the invoice itself.