Does it work for sole traders and one-person businesses?

VIES validates VAT numbers regardless of the legal form behind them – a VAT-registered sole trader’s number validates the same way a company’s does. One caveat that applies to both: VIES only shows numbers a member state has enabled for intra-EU transactions, so a purely domestic VAT registration may not appear. Whether a name and address come back depends on that country’s data policy, not the business type – the country coverage reference lists exactly which fields each country returns.

What you send and get back

Send the sole trader’s VAT number like any other: GET /v1/vat/{vatId} with the country prefix. The response has valid plus, where the country shares it, companyName and companyAddress. Both can be null while the number is still reported as valid.

Where the data differs

• Some countries never return a name or address through VIES. Germany and Spain are examples: the fields are always null there, but validation itself works.
• Registry identifiers can depend on how the VAT number is built. Where a VAT number is built from a sole trader’s personal number, the registry and tax IDs are not returned for some countries; the coverage reference spells out which.

What this means for your checks

For a sole trader, a valid: true answer is the same evidence as for a company: that number was registered for intra-EU use at the time of the check. If the name comes back null, that is the country’s data policy and not a sign the number is wrong; match on the VAT number and the data you hold about the customer.