Collect tax IDs from customers

Collect VAT and GST IDs from customers before renewal emails start next month. Add a step to the billing portal and the checkout that requires business customers in the EU and Australia to submit their tax ID, validate the format, and store it on the customer record. Run acceptance tests with three sample IDs — a German VAT, a UK VAT, and an Australian ABN — by Wednesday.

Before we ship the tax ID collection flow, make it easy for finance to verify exemptions: show the tax ID prominently on the invoice and customer record, validate common formats and flag failed validations for manual review, and add an export of collected IDs filtered by country and verification status. Highlight any UX that will increase drop-off during checkout.

We added a required VAT field to the checkout for EU businesses and saw a 12% drop in completions on Friday. The growth lead, Sam, is pushing to remove it; finance insists on IDs to avoid VAT liability. I don’t know whether we validated formats or made the field optional for known companies. What is the likely trade-off and the best immediate change to recover conversion without exposing us to tax risk?

Each attempt to collect tax IDs either kills conversion or leaves finance with garbage data. We need a pattern that protects revenue and keeps conversion healthy. Recommend a policy and implementation habits: where to require IDs, how to pre-fill or validate them, who owns manual verification, and a KPI to decide if the flow is working.