What is “VAT”?
VAT (Open joint-stock company) is a public limited liability company used primarily in Ukraine. It signals limited liability and potential public listing.
Where it's used
VAT appears in company names registered in the following jurisdiction:
What it tells you about the company
Equivalent forms around the world
These are the closest structural equivalents to VAT in other jurisdictions — same entity category, different national law.
| Country | Equivalent suffix |
|---|---|
| United States | Corp |
| Germany | AG |
| France | SA |
| France | AE |
| Germany | AGKGA |
| Germany | AKGKA |
| Ukraine | AT |
| Ukraine | ATVTT |
| Germany | COAG |
| Ukraine | DAT |
| Ukraine | DVAT |
| Germany | INVAG |
| Germany | KGA |
| Ukraine | OAO |
| United Kingdom | PLC |
| Ukraine | PRAT |
| Ukraine | PUAT |
| Germany | REITAG |
| Germany | SE |
| Germany | SE* |
| France | SEM |
| France | SICAF |
| France | SICAV |
| France | SPA |
| United Kingdom | ULTD |
Normalizing “VAT” in your data
When matching or deduplicating company records, the legal suffix is noise — “Acme VAT” and “Acme” should resolve to the same entity. One API call strips it and returns a stable canonical form:
curl -X POST https://api.ambect.com/v1/normalize/company \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $AMBECT_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"name": "Acme VAT", "country": "ua"}'{
"data": {
"canonical": "acme vat",
"legal_type": null,
"tokens": [
"acme",
"vat"
]
},
"meta": {
"pipeline": [
"lowercase",
"legal_suffix"
],
"confidence": 0.99
}
}Frequently asked questions
What does VAT mean?
VAT means "Open joint-stock company".
Is a VAT public or private?
A VAT is a public entity — it can issue shares that are listed and traded on a stock exchange.
What is the liability in a VAT?
Owners of a VAT have limited liability. Their personal assets are protected, and their exposure is capped at the amount they invested.
Which countries use VAT?
VAT is used in Ukraine.
Need to normalize VAT at scale? The Ambect API handles it across 100+ countries in under 5 ms.
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