Tax identification numbers (TIN)

8 December 2012 Most EU countries use Tax Identification Numbers (TINs) to identify taxpayers and facilitate the administration of their national tax affairs. TINs are also useful for identifying taxpayers who invest in other EU countries and are more reliable than other identifiers such as name and address.

In order to facilitate the work of all stakeholders, the European Commission has launched a cooperative project whereby information about TINs that Member States choose to publish is available in one single Internet page including:

• General information about TINs by country (when the Member State's tax administration has chosen to publish this information): descriptions of the structure and specificities of the national TIN, examples of official documents showing the TINs, national websites and contact points.
•  An online check module which allows checking the TIN syntax (i.e. algorithm) or, if not available, the TIN structure.