Italy Value Added Tax Number

Detects Italy Value Added Tax Number patterns. This pattern is based on a Microsoft Purview built-in sensitive information type. VAT numbers have country-specific prefixes that aid detection accuracy.

Type: regex
Engine: universal
Confidence: high
Confidence justification: High confidence: the IT prefix followed by exactly 11 digits is a distinctive format for Italian VAT (partita IVA) numbers. Added context gating and exclusion rules improve precision and reduce incidental matches.
Detection quality: Verified
Jurisdictions: it, eu
Regulations: GDPR
Data categories: financial, business-identifier
Scope: narrow
Risk rating: 5
Platform compatibility: Purview: Compatible, GCP DLP: Compatible, Macie: Compatible, Zscaler: Compatible, Palo Alto: Compatible, Netskope: Compatible

Pattern

\bIT\d{11}\b

Corroborative evidence keywords

partita IVA, IVA, VAT, imposta sul valore aggiunto, codice fiscale, value added tax, VAT number, belasting, BTW, Mehrwertsteuer, TVA, Umsatzsteuer, VAT registration, BTW-nummer, numéro de TVA, Steuernummer, tax number, tax registration, taxe sur la valeur ajoutée, adószám (+44 more)

Proximity: 300 characters

Should match

IT12345678901 — Standard Italian VAT number format
IT98765432101 — Italian partita IVA with IT prefix
IT11223344556 — Italian VAT identification number

Should not match

IT1234567890 — Only 10 digits after IT prefix, too short
FR12345678901 — French prefix, not Italian VAT format
template example placeholder record identifier — Template/sample context should be excluded even when anchor words are present

Known false positives

Other identifier schemes that coincidentally share a similar prefix and digit structure Mitigation: Validate the complete format including prefix and digit count. Layer with document context to confirm financial or tax-related content.
Test or example VAT numbers used in documentation or training materials Mitigation: Maintain an allow-list of known test/example numbers. Use document classification to distinguish production data from training content.

References

Italy Value Added Tax Number entity definition - Microsoft Learn