Documents treated as invoices
The taxpayer has the right to reduce the amount of tax due by the amount of input tax to the extent that the goods or services are used to perform taxable activities. However, in order to make a deduction, the purchase should be properly documented - invoices are the basic documents. Apart from them, there are also documents treated as invoices. However, it is important that they contain other elements required by law.
The VAT Act is essentially based on the so-called an invoice method, requiring taxpayers to document expenses with invoices. In general, only the invoice is eligible for a deduction of VAT. However, the Minister of Finance, using the statutory authorization, indicated documents treated as invoices in the executive regulation to the VAT Act.
Documents treated on a par with invoices w - legal regulations
They were listed by the legislator in §3 of the Regulation of the Minister of Finance of 3 December 2013 on issuing invoices (Journal of Laws of 2013, item 1485).
Single use tickets
An invoice documenting the journey on a toll motorway or a journey over a distance of not less than 50 km, issued in the form of a single ticket by taxpayers entitled to provide services consisting in the transport of passengers: standard-gauge railways, car fleet, sea-going ships, means of inland and coastal navigation, ferries, airplanes and helicopters, it should contain:
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number and date of issue,
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name and surname or name of the taxpayer,
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the number by which the taxpayer is identified for tax purposes,
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information enabling the identification of the type of service,
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tax amount,
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the total amount due.
Route fees
An invoice documenting the provision of air traffic control and supervision services for which route charges are collected, with the exception of services taxed with a tax rate of 0%, issued for monthly periods by the Central Route Charges Office (CRCO) of the European Organization for the Safety of Air Navigation ( EUROCONTROL) on behalf of the Polish Air Navigation Services Agency, should contain:
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number and date of issue,
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name and surname or name of the taxpayer,
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the number by which the taxpayer is identified for tax purposes,
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information enabling the identification of the type of service,
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tax amount,
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the total amount due,
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identification of the buyer of services,
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information about the billing period it relates to.
For each of the above-mentioned categories, the provisions indicate the elements that a given document should contain. The above documents can be treated as invoices only if they contain all the required elements.
When the documents contain the indicated data, it is possible to deduct VAT from them.
Invoice duplicate
In addition, a duplicate invoice is a document that is treated the same as an invoice. Pursuant to Art. 106l of paragraph 1 of the VAT Act, if the invoice is damaged or lost, the taxpayer is obliged to re-issue the invoice at the request of the buyer, in accordance with the data contained in the original invoice. Such reissue invoice should contain the name of the DUPLICATE and the date of issue.
Duplicate VAT invoices constitute an accounting document which, just like the original invoice, gives the taxpayer the right to deduct the input tax shown in the duplicate.
In the event of loss of source documents, including VAT invoices, the taxpayer should take steps to restore the damaged documentation. First of all, he should get duplicate invoices.
