B2B VAT gate
How the B2B VAT gate works at checkout — VAT ID validation, the professional-capacity warranty, reverse-charge treatment for EU businesses, and what to do if your country or VAT ID is rejected.
ObligoBoard is an Italian business, so EU and UK VAT rules apply at checkout. Before you can start a paid subscription, the B2B VAT gate collects and validates your VAT ID and asks you to confirm you are buying in a business capacity. This page explains what the gate asks for, why, and what to do if it blocks your checkout.
The gate appears on every checkout entry point: Settings → Billing (Pro re-subscribe), Agency → Billing (Agency upgrade), the Trial expired page, and the Founding Agencies landing page.
Why we ask
VAT treatment for a B2B software subscription depends on where your business is established and whether you hold a valid VAT ID:
- An EU business outside Italy, with a valid VIES-registered VAT ID, is reverse-charged — ObligoBoard charges 0% Italian VAT and you account for the VAT in your own member state.
- An Italian business is charged 22% Italian VAT as a domestic supply.
- A UK business sits outside the EU VAT scope for this supply — no Italian VAT is applied.
To apply the right treatment, ObligoBoard verifies your VAT ID against the EU's VIES register and records that you are acting in a business capacity. That is the whole purpose of the gate. Prices on every pricing surface are shown exclusive of VAT; the tax is calculated at checkout once your country and VAT status are known.
Filling the gate
The gate has two fields, both required.
Enter your VAT ID
Type your business VAT number including the two-letter country prefix (for example DE123456789 for Germany, IT01234567891 for Italy, GB123456789 for the UK). The prefix tells ObligoBoard which country's format to check and which register to query.
Confirm you are acting in a business capacity
Tick the box: "I confirm I am subscribing in the exercise of a business or profession." This warranty is what makes the transaction a B2B supply eligible for reverse charge (or the UK out-of-scope treatment). Without it, checkout cannot proceed.
Complete checkout
With a valid VAT ID and the warranty ticked, checkout continues to Stripe. Your VAT ID, its validation status, and the warranty timestamp are stored on your billing account so future renewals reuse them without re-asking.
If you have already passed the gate on a previous checkout, ObligoBoard reuses your stored, validated VAT ID and does not ask for the warranty again. You only re-enter a VAT ID when you are changing it.
Reverse-charge meaning
Reverse charge (in Italy, inversione contabile) means ObligoBoard, as the Italian supplier, does not add Italian VAT to your invoice. Instead, you — the business customer in another EU member state — report the VAT due on your own VAT return under the reverse-charge mechanism. Your invoice shows 0% Italian VAT with a note that the supply is reverse-charged.
The treatment you receive depends on your VAT ID's country prefix and its validation status:
| Your business country | VAT ID status | Treatment |
|---|---|---|
| Italy | valid | 22% Italian VAT (domestic) |
| EU (non-Italy) | valid | 0% reverse charge |
| EU (non-Italy) | unavailable | 0% reverse charge, provisional — re-checked later |
| UK | unverified | 0%, out of EU scope (not reverse charge) |
Italian VAT is added to the subscription amount at checkout by Stripe Tax. For a reverse-charged or out-of-scope customer, no Italian VAT is added.
Supported countries
The gate accepts VAT IDs from the EU-27 plus the United Kingdom:
AT, BE, BG, HR, CY, CZ, DK, EE, FI, FR, DE, GR, HU, IE, IT, LV, LT, LU, MT, NL, PL, PT, RO, SK, SI, ES, SE, GB
Greece is listed as GR; the EU's VIES register uses EL for Greece, and ObligoBoard maps between the two automatically, so you can enter either. Northern Ireland (XI) VAT IDs are not currently supported. If your business is registered in Northern Ireland and you hold only an XI number, contact support to discuss your options.
Switzerland and other non-EU/non-UK countries are not yet supported for subscription checkout. This is a deliberate, bounded scope rather than a permanent exclusion, and the supported list may widen over time.
Unsupported country or rejected VAT ID
If your country is not on the supported list, or your VAT ID cannot be validated, the gate blocks checkout. These are the two blocks you can hit, and how to get past each.
Your country is not supported
If your VAT ID's country prefix is outside the EU-27 + UK (for example CH, NO, US), checkout stops with a clear message that subscriptions are not yet available in your country. There is no workaround from the checkout form itself.
- If you believe your business should qualify for an exception, contact support with your organisation details and country.
- If you hold VAT IDs for entities in more than one country, use the one whose country is on the supported list, provided that entity is genuinely the contracting party.
Your VAT ID was rejected
A VAT ID is rejected when it is malformed or when VIES authoritatively reports it as invalid. This is the most common cause of an abandoned checkout at the gate. Checkout stops with the message that the VAT number could not be validated.
To get through:
- Check the prefix and number. The two-letter country prefix must match the issuing country, and the number must meet that country's format (Italian partite IVA are 11 digits; EU bodies are 2–13 alphanumeric characters).
- Confirm the ID is active in VIES. Look your number up in the EU VIES checker. If VIES shows it as not valid, contact your tax authority — ObligoBoard can only accept what VIES confirms.
- Retry if you suspect a transient issue. If VIES itself is down, the gate does not reject you — see the next section.
ObligoBoard does not store a rejected VAT ID on your account, so a failed attempt does not change your billing state. Correct the number and try again.
When VIES cannot verify your ID
VIES is a public EU service and is occasionally unavailable, slow, or rate-limited. When that happens, ObligoBoard does not block your checkout. Your VAT ID is accepted provisionally with an unavailable status, and checkout proceeds with the reverse-charge (or out-of-scope) treatment applied.
A scheduled job re-checks every provisionally accepted VAT ID against VIES after at least one day. If a number later turns out to be invalid, it is flagged and an operator is alerted, so a reverse-charge invoice is never issued against a number VIES does not confirm — you will be contacted if that happens.
UK VAT numbers are a special case. The UK is no longer in VIES, so ObligoBoard can only format-check a UK VRN, not verify it against a register. A format-valid UK number is accepted (recorded as unverified) and treated as out of EU scope.