The Greenlandic business number

There is no Greenlandic VAT number

This is the first thing to get right, because a great deal of invoicing software assumes otherwise. Greenland levies no value-added tax at all — no VAT, no GST, no sales tax of that shape. Public revenue comes from income tax and from duties on specific goods. So there is nothing for a VAT number to identify, and no Greenlandic authority issues one.

What a Greenlandic business does have is a registration number in the CVR, and that is the number this page is about. It is what appears on an invoice, what a counterparty is asked for, and what a buyer needs in order to establish who they are dealing with.

Greenland is also outside the European Union, so a Greenlandic number is not an intra-community VAT number and VIES has never heard of it. Asking VIES about one spends a call to be told the input is invalid.

The GER was dissolved, and its companies moved to Denmark

Greenland used to keep its own register, the Grønlands Erhvervsregister — the GER. It was dissolved on 1 January 2018, and every company in it was transferred into the Danish CVR. New Greenlandic businesses have registered through virk.dk ever since.

So a GER number found on an old document is a historical identifier. The company still exists, but it is now reachable by its CVR number, and that is the only number any register will answer for.

The format

A CVR number is eight digits, usually written in pairs — 12 60 89 50. There is no letter prefix in the register itself; GL is the country code used to say which country the holder sits in, in the same way DK is used for Denmark.

The shape is identical to a Danish number because it is a Danish number. GL12608950 and DK12608950 name the same legal person. Both spellings resolve here, and neither is wrong — they answer different questions.

The seat is what makes a company Greenlandic

Because Denmark and Greenland share one register and one numbering space, nothing in the number itself says which country a company belongs to. The register's own answer is the registered seat: the address on the company's entry.

Vatlas uses exactly that. A number looked up under GL answers only if the company's registered address is in Greenland — by its country code, or by a postal code in the 3900–3999 block, which is Greenland's alone. A Danish company asked for under GL comes back as not found rather than as a company in Nuuk that it is not.

Roughly 14,500 companies are registered in Greenland on that basis.

Finding the company behind the number

What comes back

The CVR holds the legal name, the legal form, the registered address, the industry code and a composite status that says whether the company is still trading. All of it is available for a Greenlandic company on the same terms as for a Danish one.

Addresses are not shaped like Danish ones

Many Greenlandic entries have a postal code and a town and no street at all — settlements are small, and a great many addresses are a box number. Permagreen Grønland A/S, in Nuuk, is one of them. An empty street line is the register's own answer, not a gap in the lookup.

Town names are Greenlandic: Nuuk (3900), Sisimiut (3911), Narsaq (3921), Ilulissat (3952). The municipalities are Sermersooq, Qeqqata, Qeqertalik, Avannaata and Kujalleq.

Greenland-specific pitfalls

• Do not ask for a VAT number. There is none. A form that will not accept a counterparty without one cannot be satisfied by a Greenlandic company.
• Do not send the number to VIES. Greenland is outside the Union; the call is wasted.
• A CVR number alone does not tell you the country. Eight digits are eight digits. Only the registered address separates Greenland from Denmark.
• An old GER number will not resolve. It was retired in 2018; the CVR number replaced it.
• Expect an empty street line. It is normal here, and not a sign of a bad record.
• Greenland is not in the EU, despite Denmark being a member state. It left in 1985 and trade with it is trade with a third country.

One API, one response shape

Vatlas turns a business tax number into a company record: legal name, national identifier, legal form, status and address. Greenland — the same call and the same response as for every other country covered.

curl "https://api.vatlas.dev/v1/lookup/GL12608950" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $VATLAS_KEY"

Response:

200 OK

{
  "data": {
    "vatNumber": "GL12608950",
    "countryCode": "GL",
    "nationalNumber": "12608950",
    "nationalId": "12608950",
    "name": "KNI EJENDOMME A/S",
    "legalForm": "Aktieselskab",
    "status": "active",
    "address": {
      "line1": "J M Jensenip Aqquserna 2",
      "line2": null,
      "postalCode": "3911",
      "city": "Sisimiut",
      "country": "GL"
    }
  },
  "meta": {
    "source": "CVR-GL",
    "sourceDate": "2026-09-17",
    "sourceSince": "2026-09-17",
    "sourceUpdatedAt": "2026-09-09T06:12:50.000Z"
  }
}

meta.source names the register that answered (SIRENE, ARES, VIES…) and meta.sourceDate the day it said so: the publication date of the file for a register we import, the day of the call for one we query live. The shape of the response never changes from one country to the next.

Get a free key Read the documentation

Business numbers in other countries

• Denmark
• Norway
• Sweden
• Finland
• Canada
• All countries

Last updated 17 September 2026.