Important Update for UK VAT Validation in Commerce 1.6

If you use Commerce to sell to customers or businesses in the UK and rely on its built-in VAT Number validation to apply the correct tax schemes, we have an important update for you.

What’s changing?

The UK tax office, HMRC, is shutting down the v1 API used by Commerce for UK VAT Number validation at the end of this month.

The new v2 API functions similarly but includes additional validation requirements to get access to the production environment. We’ve spent the last month working with HMRC's Developer Team, so you don’t have to worry about disruptions or complying with these requirements on a per-site basis.

What you need to do

To ensure your UK VAT Number validation continues working seamlessly, you will need to upgrade to Commerce 1.6.0-pl before the end of the month.

If you’re not yet using the 1.6 series of Commerce, be sure to review the upgrade notes for important details and learn about the new features and improvements it introduces.

Other fixes in this release since 1.6.0-rc1:

• [core] Fix comOrder::isAuthorized returning true when orders have a 0 total
• [dashboard] Fix "Choices.js _getTemplate is not a function" error preventing dropdowns from populating [#1603/S45513]
• [payments] Fix Stripe's order to link including the site's base url [S45501]