Hello Ryan!

A short explanation on EU-VAT-ID-system: If my customer is a company and thus has got a valid VAT ID, this number (e.g. ATU12345678) has to be annotated on every invoice. Hence this ID somehow sticks to the order/adress data and should be stored in the same record (to my opinion...).

The VAT ID has an influence on the calculation of VAT (->workflow_ng) and must be printed on various documents. There is no need to do selects/order-bys on that column. If it could easily retrieved from the $order->data array (newbee - not sure what this array does and where it can be accessed) this would doubtlessly be fine!