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Zend_Validate_SalesTaxNum

1. Overview

Zend_Validate_SalesTaxNum is a simple component that validates European (EU) sales tax numbers.

It offers two kinds of validation:

  1. Whether the syntax of an EU sales tax number is correct (each country has its own pattern)
  2. Whether an EU sales tax number exists and is being used (via VIES API)

Each EU member state has a different name for their sales tax numbers [1], hence a neutral term has been chosen for the class name: "sales tax number".

Comments on the class name are requested. For example, Zend_Validate_Eusalestaxno could also be possible.

A sample implementation of this class is attached to this page ("Zend_Validate_SalesTaxNum.tar.bz2")

[1] - UK: "VAT", DE: "MwSt", FR: "TVA" etc.

2. References

3. Component Requirements, Constraints, and Acceptance Criteria

  • This component will validate the syntax of an EU sales tax number
  • This component will validate the existence (whether it is being used used or not) of an EU sales tax number
  • This component will not validate sales tax from countries other than EU member states.

4. Dependencies on Other Framework Components

  • Zend_Exception
  • Zend_Validate_Abstract

5. Theory of Operation

Validates and checks existence of EU sales tax numbers. On failure, following error strings are available:

6. Milestones / Tasks

  • Milestone 1: [DONE] write proposal
  • Milestone 2: get the proposal approved
  • Milestone 3: working prototype checked into the incubator
  • Milestone 4: write unit test, and check into SVN
  • Milestone 5: write documentation for this validator.
  • Milestone 6: introduce "component" to core.

8. Use Cases

9. Class Skeletons

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5 Comments

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  1. Mar 13, 2008

    Teemu Välimäki

    Zend_Validate_SalesTaxId might be better, because the input contains letter also. If not I think cutting short the word Number is not a good idea, since it doesn't really save space.

    But more importantly I think there should be Zend_Validate_SalesTaxNum_Eu, Zend_Validate_SalesTaxNum_Usa for the continents and probably Zend_Validate_SalesTaxNum_Finland etc. for each country. In Finland VAT and Business IDs are the same thing, but in a bit different format.
    VAT=FI12345678, ID=1234567-8

    In my opinion validator should check automatically validation for either case. User should then use filter to put it in correct format.

  2. Aug 21, 2008

    Jaka Jancar

    It should really be called VATIN (Value Added Tax Identification Number) validator, as that is the EU-wide name for it (locally, countries use different names for it).

  3. Aug 21, 2008

    Jaka Jancar

    Here is an implementation of the format check:

  4. Mar 16, 2009

    Joakim Nygård

    I wrote a complete validator for the Danish CVR numbers available here:
    jokke.dk

  5. Feb 06, 2011

    Dolf Schimmel (Freeaqingme)

    Archiving this proposal, feel free to recover it when you want to work on it again. For more details see this email.