Why VIES returns no company name for German and Spanish VAT numbers

You validate a German VAT number, VIES says it is valid, and the name and address come back empty or as ---. Your code is fine.

It is a national choice

VIES only relays what each member state's tax administration agrees to disclose. Germany and Spain answer whether a number is valid but do not publish the holder's name or address through VIES. Other countries return them.

Why it breaks integrations

A missing name looks exactly like a partial failure. Code that treats "no name" as an error rejects valid German customers; code that silently accepts any empty field cannot tell a real failure from a normal answer.

How to handle it

• Keep a list of countries that do not disclose, and treat an empty name from them as expected.
• Use the qualified check (checkVatApprox) if you need matching: you send the name and address you have, and the member state answers whether they match, where it supports it.
• Store valid plus the check date as your evidence; the name is a bonus, not a requirement.

How Vatline exposes it

Every Vatline answer carries name_available and address_available. For German and Spanish numbers they are false, so your code knows the null is expected:

{"valid": true, "country": "DE", "name": null, "address": null,
 "name_available": false, "address_available": false, ...}

Per-country disclosure rules are listed on VAT number formats.

Skip the plumbing. Vatline wraps VIES in a REST/JSON API with caching, retry hints and per-country circuit breakers. Free plan: 300 checks a month, no card. Read the docs or try a number now.