Privacy Policy

Verification of tax details through VIES

Supplement to the scatole.com privacy notice. The data controller is identified in the main privacy notice. For business orders from other EU countries, we check the country and VAT number through the European Commission’s official VIES service, which consults national tax authorities. We send only the country code and VAT number to VIES: names, addresses, email addresses, telephone numbers, delivery details and payment details are not included in the request. Where available, we compare the business name and address returned with the billing details entered. The purpose is to handle orders and invoicing correctly and reduce errors and misuse of tax details. Where personal data are involved, the legal basis for the check is our legitimate interest in accurate transactions (Article 6(1)(f) GDPR); invoicing and retention of tax records also rely on applicable legal obligations (Article 6(1)(c)). We do not use these details for marketing profiling. A difference in the name or address is flagged for human review, without automatically changing fields or rejecting the order. An invalid response or service outage does not authorise automatic VAT exemption: the customer sees the treatment applied in the order summary. The request may also include our own VAT number to obtain an official consultation reference.

Successful checks are cached for one hour; invalid results and errors are cached for two minutes and one minute respectively. For completed orders, we retain the VAT number, result, date, any returned details and customer confirmation with the order records for the applicable tax record retention periods. Results are accessible only to staff authorised to manage orders. VIES does not always return a name and address and may be temporarily unavailable.

You may request clarification, access or correction and, where applicable, object to processing based on legitimate interests, using the contacts in the main privacy notice or by writing to info@scatole.com.