European VAT ID check not validating ID fully

[b2000699]

Hi,

I just tried out your demo and filled out customer contact data in the cart.
First I entered a totally wrong EU VAT ID (not enough digits) and the system complained correctly about that.
But then I entered a correct German VAT ID for a company with address in *_another *_EU country. The system accepted that without noticing, so obviously the validity of the ID is not fully checked. There are different levels of checking the VAT ID:

1. Checking the basic sanity of the ID, e.g. counting if the ID has enough characters, a country code prefix, etc. => The first error was identified correctly!
2. Checking the logical sanity of the ID, i.e. checking if the ID could be valid by knowing the algorithm with which they are created (the last digits commonly are checksums)
3. Checking if the ID is registered in the EU register
4. Checking if the ID is registered in the EU register and if the company name, form and address are fitting to the ones in the EU database. => Did not notice mistake of German ID with foreign address.

For my comprehension, so that someone can say that the web shop is validating VAT IDs correctly, it must check as described in point 4: A full check.

Maybe this is helping someone: http://evatr.bff-online.de/eVatR/
It is the validation link of the German Tax office. After checking a VAT ID, in the second step you are presented with a "full check" which also checks company name, form and adress (even with a fuzzy factor!). In the menu to the left there are links with technical information for developers. Maybe those links are helping?

Cheers and all the best for this wonderful project!!