README

This is a simple PHP library to help you deal with Europe's VAT rules.

• Fetch VAT rates for any EU member state using ibericode/vat-rates.
• Validate VAT numbers (by format and/or existence)
• Validate ISO-3316 alpha-2 country codes
• Determine whether a country is part of the EU
• Geo-locate IP addresses

Installation

PHP version 8.2 or higher with the CURL and JSON extension is required.

For VAT number existence checking, the PHP SOAP extension is required as well.

To get the latest stable version, install the package using Composer:

composer require ibericode/vat

Usage

This library exposes 4 main classes to interact with: Rates, Countries, Validator and Geolocator.

Retrieving VAT rates.

This package relies on a community maintained repository of vat rates. We invite you to toggle notifications for that repository and contribute changes to VAT rates in your country once they are announced.

$rates = new Ibericode\Vat\Rates('/path-for-storing-cache-file.txt');
$rates->getRateForCountry('NL'); // 21
$rates->getRateForCountry('NL', 'standard'); // 21
$rates->getRateForCountry('NL', 'reduced'); // 9
$rates->getRateForCountryOnDate('NL', new \DateTime('2010-01-01'), 'standard'); // 19

This fetches rate from ibericode/vat-rates and stores a local copy that is periodically refreshed (once every 12 hours by default).

Validation

Validating a VAT number:

$validator = new Ibericode\Vat\Validator();
$validator->validateVatNumberFormat('NL203458239B01'); // true (checks format)
$validator->validateVatNumber('NL203458239B01'); // false (checks format + existence)

Validating an IP address:

$validator = new Ibericode\Vat\Validator();
$validator->validateIpAddress('256.256.256.256'); // false
$validator->validateIpAddress('8.8.8.8'); // true

Validating an ISO-3166-1-alpha2 country code:

$validator = new Ibericode\Vat\Validator();
$validator->validateCountryCode('DE'); // true
$validator->validateCountryCode('ZZ'); // false

Dealing with ISO-3166-1-alpha2 country codes

$countries = new Ibericode\Vat\Countries();

// access country name using array access
echo $countries['NL']; // Netherlands

// loop over countries
foreach ($countries as $code => $name) {
    // ...
}

// check if country is in EU
$countries->isCountryCodeInEU('NL'); // true
$countries->isCountryCodeInEU('US'); // false

Geo-location

This library includes a simple geo-location service using ip2c.org or ip2country.info (deprecated as of Dec 2022).

$geolocator = new Ibericode\Vat\Geolocator();
$geolocator->locateIpAddress('8.8.8.8'); // US

To use ip2c.org explicitly.

$geolocator = new Ibericode\Vat\Geolocator('ip2c.org');
$geolocator->locateIpAddress('8.8.8.8'); // US

Symfony support

If you need to use this package in a Symfony environment, check out ibericode/vat-bundle.

License

ibericode/vat is licensed under the MIT License.