Reverse Charge across the EU: what a creator agency actually needs to check

Creator agencies increasingly bill across borders — a German agency invoicing a French brand, a Berlin creator working for an Austrian agency. Reverse Charge (§ 13b UStG / Art. 196 EU VAT Directive) shifts VAT liability to the recipient in B2B cross-border services, but only when both parties are validly VAT-registered and the service actually qualifies.

The practical failure mode is not misunderstanding the rule — it's skipping the VAT ID check. An unvalidated or lapsed VAT ID on the recipient's side means Reverse Charge doesn't apply even if everything else does, and the agency ends up liable for VAT it never collected.

A live VIES lookup before issue, not a one-time check at onboarding, is the difference between a clean invoice and a correction six months later.