Terms of service: Polish Vat Scanner

Effective from: December 31st, 2019.

The Polish Vat Scanner module includes two services:

  • NRB verification,
  • Polish Vat Scanner.

NRB verification

  1. The NRB Check service allows you to check the contractor’s NIP number and his bank account number in a flat file (VAT white list) provided by the Ministry of Finance – National Tax Administration (KAS). The flat file allows the verification of the: settlement accounts, personal accounts in SKOK and virtual accounts.
  2. The NRB check service is available in the “VAT White List (KYC)” category and settled under the NIP-Scanner module. It allows you to check whether the NIP number and bank account number provided by the customer are in a flat file, made available by KAS on a given day. In response, you will receive information containing the status of the customer – (status for the data pair, tax identification number and bank account number). The flat file does not allow checking the tax ID number and searching for a bank account number. To do this, please use the NIP Scanner service – VAT register.
  3. The NRB Check service is available in two variants: collective verification and single verification. Each inquiry, regardless of whether it is a verification of one bank account or a set of bank accounts, is treated as a single query to the database and settled within the available balance.
  4. The NRB Check service is closely related to the Polish Vat Scanner module and settled from the balance of this module for each request.
  5. Sending an NRB inquiry returns the following messages: “Incorrect NIP” (incorrect check number – NIP number is checked for building the number), “Incorrect data” – the bank account number is not constructed correctly. If the Tax Identification Number (NIP) and bank account number are correct, in response we will receive information whether the given pair is on that day in a flat file provided by KAS.
  6. Sending the NRB query returns the messages: “Active”, “VAT-free”, “Not registered for VAT”.
  7. If you have a positive balance of available queries – each time you send a NRB query, the number of available requests decreases by one.

Polish Vat Scanner 

  1.  Polish Vat Scanner allows checking the contractor’s VAT number in three publicly available registers:
  • in the Polish business registry kept by the Central Statistical Office,
  • in the VAT register – the so-called VAT white list – kept by the National Tax Administration,
  • in the VIES register made available by the European Commission.
  1. Polish business registry: checks whether the customer’s VAT number is correct and whether the company with the given number exists. If the VAT number is correct and such entity exists, you will receive information containing basic data about this customer, date: start of operation, its suspension or / and liquidation, current status of the activity. The source of data is the Central Statistical Office.
  2. VAT registry: checks if the company with the provided VAT number is registered as a VAT taxpayer on the White VAT List. The source of data is the register provided by the National Tax Administration.
  3. VIES registry: checks the activity of the EU VAT number. In response, we receive information for cross-border transactions within the EU.
  4. The service is available as a web application on the HyperFlow platform and by the API (Webservice REST JSON).
  5. The service is available as query packages and charged for each query requested to the database, regardless of the number of selected registers within the available Balance of queries or in the form of unlimited access for a specified period *.
  6. When the service has the status Active – every fill in of non-empty value in the query form window and pressing the button “Check Vat status” or Enter, or send correctly technical formulated request by the API (according to the API documentation) is called sending a request. The answer to the request is presented as a text information (for WWW Applications) or message in JSON format (for requests sent by the API).
  7. Sending a polish business registry query returns the following messages: “Bad VAT number” (incorrect control number – VAT number is checked in terms of number construction), “Record not found” – VAT number is structured correctly, however there is no entity with this VAT number. If the tax identification number is correct and the entity with this number exists, in response we will receive information about the entity, including the current status of the activity.
  8. Sending the query “National VAT registry” returns the following messages: “Active”, “VAT-free”, “Not registered for VAT”. It also contains the query date and query id.
  9. Sending a query, the VIES report returns the messages “Active” or “Not registered for VAT”. It also includes the date of the inquiry and the company’s address to confirm.
  10. If the credit balance is greater than zero, each time a request is sent, the number of available requests is reduced by one.
  11. The service become inactive when the number of requests (credit balance) on a given Customer Account is 0 (zero).
  12. The service provider does not provide the entire database (copies to be downloaded) as part of providing this service.
  13. The maximum frequency of sending queries is 5 queries per second.
  14. If the queries are executed more frequently, the service may respond with the error code: “Server busy”.
  15. If you send a request terminated by a “Server busy” or “Server timeout error” – the balance of available queries is not reduced. 
  16. The Polish Vat Scanner service includes the NRB Verification module, which allows you to check a pair of data: VAT no. and bank account number in a flat file provided by the Ministry of Finance – National Tax Administration in Poland. NRB verification is closely related to the Polish Vat Scanner service and is charged for each request from the balance of this service. 
  17. The NRB Verification module enables mass verification by entering or pasting VAT numbers and bank accounts (separated by a space), or by loading a file with this data.
  18. The feature Vat Scanner History allows to get monthly query report and to follow changes of contractor data, e.g. change of status, name, address, etc.
  19. The VAT Scanner History feature has been added to the Vat Scanner service, which is closely related to the service and is available when the service has an Active status.
  20. The VAT Scanner History feature provides a history of queries in the scope of: query date, NIP number, full entity name, entity status, legal form name and the name of the user’s querying.
  21. Full historical data of Polish business registry requests is available as monthly reports to download in CSV format.
  22. The Service Provider is not responsible for the lack of access to the Central Statistical Office, VAT or VIES registers, especially in cases where:
  •  servers providing the service operated by NTA do not respond,
  •  National Tax Administration will not provide a flat file on a given day,
  • VIES servers are not responding,
  • servers providing the service run by the CSO do not respond.
  • In accordance with the recommendations of the National Tax Administration, when the service is unavailable, keep information on the unavailability of the service and inform the competent Heads of Tax Offices about the transfers you have made.

 *- access for a definite period with no call limit – above 20,000 queries / month the service will still be active, however, to ensure service continuity, the waiting time for response may be extended to 30 seconds.

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