Claude Pro VAT is decided by two fields Anthropic never shows you

Two layers. The authoritative input is your billing address: Anthropic's help center states 'your billing address determines how taxes are calculated on your Claude purchases.' The observable layer is one field on the subscription object, subscription.payment_method.country, an ISO-3166 two-letter code (GB, DE, FR, HU, US, and so on). That field is declared in claude-meter/src/models.rs at line 45, inside the PaymentMethod struct (lines 42 to 49), and it is populated by GET https://claude.ai/api/organizations/{your_org_uuid}/subscription_details, the same endpoint the Settings billing page calls. By default Anthropic captures your billing address from your payment card, so for most individuals the billing-address country and payment_method.country are the same value, which makes the field a fast proxy for the rate you will be charged. If it reads GB, Anthropic applies 20% UK VAT on top of the $20 Pro base; DE applies 19%; US applies none. Your account email and your IP do not enter into it; the billing address (and the card that usually sets it) does.

The Settings page at claude.ai/settings/billing shows your plan, your next charge date, and the card on file. It does not render the tax line on top. That line is computed by Stripe at charge time, based on the country code Anthropic passed to the Stripe Tax API, and it only appears on the PDF invoice emailed to you after the charge clears. So a UK subscriber sees '$20/month' in the Settings UI and a charge of '$24.00' (or the local currency equivalent) on the card statement, with no warning in between. Reading payment_method.country yourself is the fastest way to know in advance which rate will apply.

Check the currency field on the same subscription_details payload. It is declared at claude-meter/src/models.rs line 57 and arrives as a lowercase three-letter code, typically 'usd'. Anthropic bills every individual Pro plan in USD by default, and the card network (Visa, Mastercard, Amex) does the FX conversion on their side. So a German subscriber sees a USD charge of around $23.80 on Stripe, their bank converts that to EUR at the daily retail rate, and the statement line reads something like €22.47. The currency field almost always returns 'usd' for Pro, even in the EU and UK; Team and Enterprise plans are the accounts that sometimes flip to local currency.

For business customers, yes, on future invoices. Per Anthropic's help center, when you sign up for Pro or Max you may have the option to enter a Tax or VAT ID depending on your location, and you can add or update it later at Settings > Billing > Update (next to your payment method); Team and Console organizations have the same field. So this is not Team/Enterprise-only anymore; individual Pro and Max can self-serve where the region supports it. A valid VAT ID for a jurisdiction that supports reverse-charge on B2B digital services removes VAT from future invoices, but it does not refund past VAT. Anthropic is explicit that updates apply to future billing cycles only and previously completed invoices cannot be updated retroactively, so to recover VAT already charged you email support@anthropic.com with your VAT ID and the invoice numbers and ask for a credit or amended invoice. The field's availability still depends on your billing country, so not every region exposes it.

GET https://claude.ai/api/organizations/{your_org_uuid}/subscription_details, with your normal claude.ai session cookies attached. No API key, no OAuth, no developer plan. The endpoint is called from claude-meter/src/api.rs at line 49, inside the desktop Rust client, and from claude-meter/extension/background.js line 28 in the browser extension. It is undocumented, but it is the same call the Settings > Billing page makes on page load; you can watch it happen in DevTools > Network on claude.ai/settings/billing.

Because the country on file is set from your billing address, and by default that address is captured from your card rather than re-confirmed per charge. If you are a UK resident paying with a US-issued corporate card (common for consultants billed through a foreign parent company), the field returns US and no VAT is applied. If you are a US resident paying with a UK-issued card because you moved, it returns GB and you get charged 20% VAT. This is standard Stripe Tax behavior, but it is invisible until you read the field. The fix is to correct what Anthropic has on file: update the billing address at Settings > Billing > Billing Addresses (it takes effect on future invoices), or switch to a payment method issued in the country you want treated as your tax residence. If you need a billing address that differs from your card, Anthropic asks you to contact support with documentation, a VAT registration certificate for non-US customers, verifying your location.

VAT is added on top for VAT jurisdictions. The $20.00 displayed on the pricing page and in Settings is the pre-tax base. On a GB country code, the invoice line is $20.00 + $4.00 (20% UK VAT) = $24.00. On DE, it is $20.00 + $3.80 (19% German VAT) = $23.80. On HU (Hungary, 27% VAT, the highest EU rate), it is $20.00 + $5.40 = $25.40. On US or any non-VAT jurisdiction, the invoice is flat $20.00. The $20 sticker price is consistent worldwide; only the add-on tax changes.

The automated monthly invoice from Stripe (emailed to the address on your Anthropic account) already contains the VAT line and the tax amount for your region. To add a company name and a VAT ID (for reverse-charge, available on Pro and Max depending on your location, and on Team and Console organizations), go to Settings > Billing on claude.ai and add them there before the next charge cycle. Invoices issued before you added the company details will not be backdated; you have to email support@anthropic.com and ask for a reissue, which they will process manually. The per-month cadence of the charge is billing_interval on the same subscription_details response (field at models.rs line 54).

It shows the data it gets from subscription_details. The current build renders next_charge_date and the masked payment method at src/format.rs lines 42 to 57. The payment_method.country field is deserialized into the struct at models.rs line 45 and is available to the UI layer, even if the default CLI output does not print it. If you run the --json flag on the desktop binary, you get the full UsageSnapshot including the subscription block, and that block contains both payment_method.country and currency. The browser extension stores the same snapshot in chrome.storage.local under the 'snapshots' key, readable from DevTools > Application.

From the next charge cycle. Stripe Tax computes jurisdiction at the moment the invoice is drafted, not at the moment you update the card. So if your next charge is on the 12th and you update the payment method on the 10th, the 12th invoice recomputes using the new country code and drops the VAT line. If you update on the 13th, the 12th invoice is already locked with the old country code, and the 20% UK VAT (or whatever rate applied) stays on it. To confirm the switch landed before the next cycle, re-fetch subscription_details and check that payment_method.country is the new code before next_charge_date.

For individual Pro, the currency field has consistently returned 'usd' on every account we have sampled in the US, UK, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Poland, and Hungary. On Team plans in the UK and EU, it sometimes returns 'eur' or 'gbp', with the plan price converted server-side and the VAT applied to the converted amount. Enterprise accounts negotiate separately and often return a third-party currency via a managed Anthropic contract. The single source of truth for your own account is the currency field on subscription_details; do not assume your plan is billed in the currency your bank shows, because your bank is showing the post-FX number.

Yes. Open claude.ai/settings/billing with DevTools' Network panel open, filter to XHR, find the request to /api/organizations/{uuid}/subscription_details, and read the response JSON. Or, from a terminal with your cookie header captured: curl -s https://claude.ai/api/organizations/$ORG/subscription_details -H "Cookie: $COOKIES" | jq '.payment_method.country, .currency'. You will get two lines back. The first is your tax country code. The second is your billing currency. That is the entire VAT surface Anthropic exposes to you.