Starting in 2027, France (and more broadly the EU) will require VAT number collection for B2B orders, notably in the context of e-invoicing and tax compliance.
From a Shopify perspective, this raises a major concern: non-Shopify Plus merchants cannot add custom fields to the checkout, which makes collecting a VAT number at order time extremely difficult (or impossible) in a compliant way (the company name field is not enough at all, we need a valid VAT number on top of the company name).
As an app developer currently working on French e-invoicing compliance, this is becoming a blocking issue for many merchants on Standard / Advanced plans.
A few questions for Shopify / the community:
Is Shopify planning any native solution for VAT number collection at checkout for non-Plus merchants?
Are there any roadmap discussions or internal teams already working on this topic?
What is the recommended approach today for apps that need reliable VAT data at order creation time?
Happy to provide more technical context if needed.
Thanks in advance for any insight.
I’m not 100% sure how this works in other countries, but in France, upcoming e-invoicing regulations will require invoices to be submitted to a certified platform with a set of mandatory data. One key requirement is the ability to clearly distinguish B2B from B2C orders. For B2B orders, the invoice must include the company’s VAT ID, company name, registration number, and other required business details.
Thanks @Axel - can you send me a link to anything on this though? I’d like to read up on the requirements (in whole) as this is an interesting point you’ve brought up.
EDIT: I just did some searching on my own and found some good info starting on Avalara’s site.