The Italian VAT number (partita IVA)

The eleven digits

Domestically the number is written as eleven digits alone; the IT prefix is added when it is used as an intra-community identifier, for instance on an invoice to another member state. It never contains letters.

• 0074311A sequential number assigned to the taxpayer.
• 015The code of the provincial office that issued it.
• 7The check digit, computed with the Luhn formula.

The three middle digits normally match the ISTAT province code — 015 is Milan, 001 Turin, 058 Rome — with a few reserved codes (120, 121, 888, 999) for central offices and non-resident taxpayers. They say where the VAT position was opened, not where the business operates today, and they survive any relocation.

Partita IVA and codice fiscale

This is the most common confusion, and the answer depends on the taxpayer.

• Companies and entities (S.p.A., S.r.l., cooperatives, trading associations): the codice fiscale is numeric, 11 digits, and is the same number as the partita IVA. One number, two purposes.
• Natural persons — freelancers and sole traders: the codice fiscale is a 16-character alphanumeric code derived from name, date and place of birth, and the partita IVA is a completely separate 11-digit number. Invoices carry both.

There is also the REA number (Repertorio Economico Amministrativo), written as a province abbreviation plus a sequence — MI-1234567. It identifies the Chamber of Commerce registration and has no computable link to the VAT number.

Finding the company behind a partita IVA

The Agenzia delle Entrate service

The Italian tax agency runs a free partita IVA check: it says whether the number is valid, whether it is active or closed, and returns the trading name. It returns no address, and it is not designed for bulk querying.

The Registro delle Imprese

The business register kept by the Chambers of Commerce, at registroimprese.it, has everything: seat, legal form, capital, directors, financial statements. It can be searched by VAT number, but extracts are paid and there is no free bulk download. That is why Italy, despite having an excellent register, has no open source usable at volume.

VIES

Italy behaves well here: unlike Germany and Spain, it discloses both the trading name and the full address through VIES. A typical answer is LARGO FRANCESCO RICHINI 6 followed by 20122 MILANO MI — with the two-letter province appended to the town, a detail worth handling when you split the address.

One caveat: holding a partita IVA is not enough to appear in VIES. The business must be included in the VIES archive, an option taken when declaring the start of activity or afterwards. Without it the number is perfectly active in Italy and comes back invalid for intra-community operations.

Italy-specific pitfalls

• Active in Italy ≠ valid in VIES. The costliest trap: the company exists, the partita IVA is active, but because it is not in the VIES archive the number comes back invalid to a foreign customer.
• For an S.r.l. the partita IVA and the codice fiscale are the same number, for a freelancer they are not. A form with a single field will collect wrong data.
• The province abbreviation is glued to the town in VIES addresses: MILANO MI, ROMA RM. It has to be split off, or it ends up inside the city name.
• The three office digits do not say where the business is today, only where its VAT position was opened.
• Closed numbers stay in the register. Closure is a status, not a deletion, and a partita IVA is never reassigned.

One API, all 27 member states

Vatlas turns a European VAT number into a company record: legal name, national identifier, legal form, status and address. Same call, same response, for Italy and for the other twenty-six.

curl "https://api.vatlas.dev/v1/vat/IT00743110157" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $VATLAS_KEY"

Response:

200 OK

{
  "data": {
    "vatNumber": "IT00743110157",
    "countryCode": "IT",
    "nationalNumber": "00743110157",
    "nationalId": null,
    "name": "MOTOROLA SOLUTIONS ITALIA SRL",
    "legalForm": null,
    "status": "active",
    "address": {
      "line1": "LARGO FRANCESCO RICHINI 6",
      "line2": null,
      "postalCode": "20122",
      "city": "MILANO MI",
      "country": "IT"
    }
  },
  "meta": {
    "origin": "vies",
    "source": "VIES",
    "sourceUpdatedAt": "2026-08-28T09:43:39.522Z",
    "checked": ["database", "VIES"]
  }
}

meta.origin says where the data came from: database for registers imported locally, source for a national API queried live, vies as a last resort. The shape of the response never changes from one country to the next.

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VAT numbers in other countries

• France
• Germany
• Spain
• Belgium
• All countries

Last updated 28 August 2026.