Reverse charge VAT: what to put on an invoice to an EU or UK client

Normally the seller charges VAT and pays it to the tax authority. Under the reverse charge, the *buyer* accounts for it instead. You invoice without VAT and they handle both sides on their own return.

It exists so that a business in Berlin buying design work from Bengaluru does not need the supplier to register for German VAT.

This is general information about how these rules commonly work, not tax advice for your business. Rules change and your circumstances may differ — confirm anything here with your accountant before acting on it.

The common case for a freelancer: your client is a business (not a consumer) established in the EU or UK, and you are established outside it.

The business part matters. Selling to a consumer in the EU is a different regime entirely, with different registration thresholds. If your client cannot give you a VAT number, treat that as a signal to check rather than an administrative inconvenience.

Three things, and finance departments do check:

• Your client's VAT number, shown on the invoice
• Your own tax registration number
• An explicit statement that the reverse charge applies

The wording most commonly accepted is: "Reverse charge — VAT to be accounted for by the recipient." Some jurisdictions prefer a reference to the specific article of the VAT Directive; your client's accounts team will tell you if they need it, and it costs nothing to ask before the first invoice rather than after it bounces.

In rough order of frequency:

• No reverse-charge statement at all
• The client's VAT number missing or mistyped
• VAT charged when it should not have been — which creates a problem for both sides
• No invoice number, or a number that duplicates an earlier one

Each of these is a two-week delay while an email thread resolves it. On a 30-day payment term that is a material part of your cashflow, caused by a missing sentence.

EU VAT numbers can be validated for free through the European Commission's VIES service, and UK numbers through HMRC's checker.

Worth doing once, at the start of a relationship. A number that does not validate is either a typo or a sign the client is not the business entity you think they are.