MoF leaves imprint on printing race

More local tax authority issued invoices will be sold to enterprises to prevent overloading at printing organisations.

The Ministry of Finance (MoF) has just released Document 16988/BTC-TCT dated December 14, 2010 asking local tax authorities to sell more invoices until December 30, 2010 to guarantee supplies to March 31, 2011.

“Under Decree 51/2010/ND-CP providing for the printing, issuance, use and management of invoices, many enterprises signed contracts to print invoices with printing houses. However, it is likely until March, 2010 that printing houses can hand over invoices for enterprises,” said an MoF Tax Policy Department representative.

“Currently, most printing houses are nearly overloaded with many invoices needing to be printed which makes it impossible for enterprises to implement Decree 51 in time,” he added.

According to Decree 51, from January 1, 2011, tax authorities will be restricted in issuing and selling the invoices designed by the MoF to enterprises. Instead, enterprises are required to use self-printed invoices in the form of either printed-out invoices from enterprise’s own machines or printed-out invoices by qualified printing organisations or electronic-invoices under the Law on Electronic Transactions.

An accounting manager of a Ho Chi Minh City-based company said in recent days, it was difficult to contact printing houses to ask for price quotations.

“Some printing organisations did not accept if enterprises order a small number of invoices,” she said.

To Thien Long, a spokesman of Nguyen Xuong Thinh Limited Company, said: “If enterprises order to print invoices at this moment, at least after one month, they can receive invoices to use.”

Another director of a printing company said the company had signed invoice printing contracts with about 100-120 companies each day. However, only 30 per cent of these firms have received invoices to date.

“Many companies from other provinces have come to order and it is hard to address all enterprises’ requests before December 31, 2010,” he said.

Meanwhile,  Ho Chi Minh City Taxation Department representative  Tran Le Nga said tax authorities would continue to support and guide enterprises to carry out printing invoices.

Formerly, the General Department of Taxation allowed organisations and individuals who bought invoices issued by the MoF or have been using self-printed invoices, if underspent until December 31, 2010, to continue to use their current invoices till the end of the first quarter in 2011.

This direction is to help enterprises avoid wasting outstanding invoices because according to the MoF’s report, in 2010, apart from 1,000 enterprises who has been carrying out self-printed invoices, other organisations and individuals have still used the MoF’s invoices