Công văn 1877/TCT-CS

The General Department of Taxation has received official dispatch CV03/0113-BASF.FA dated January 23, 2013, of Vietnam BASF limited liability Company, on writing name of products on invoices, the General Department of Taxation has the following opinion:

At Article 4 of Circular No. 153/2010/TT-BTC dated September 28, 2010 of the Ministry of Finance, prescribed compulsory content which must be stated on invoice:

"1. Compulsory contents of a made-out invoice must be presented on the same paper side.

…

k) Invoices shall be made in Vietnamese. For an invoice requiring foreign language words, those words shall be put in brackets ( ) to the right of or just below the Vietnamese words with a font size smaller than that of the Vietnamese words. Figures written on an invoice are natural numerals: 0, 1, 2. 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9. The numbers representing for thousand, million, billion, trillion, billions million and billions billion digits must be followed by a dot (.); the numbers following the numbers representing unit digit must be preceded with a comma (,).

An organization's or individual's invoices of a given format must be of the same size.

An export invoice must contain the serial number of invoice; name and address of the exporter: name and address of the importer: name of goods or service, unit of calculation, quantity, unit price, amount and signature of the exporter (Form No. 5.4 Appendix 5 of this Circular). An export invoice which uses only one language shall be made in English. Organizations and individuals may use value-added invoices for their sale of goods or provision of services into non-tariff zones and in cases regarded as export under the commerce law.”

Based on provisions mentioned above, name of goods and services written on invoices shall be made in Vietnamese. For an invoice requiring foreign language words, those words shall be put in brackets ( ) to the right of or just below the Vietnamese words with a font size smaller than that of the Vietnamese words.

Case of BAFS limited liability Company, because typically, chemical commodities are named under chemical formula originated from foreign countries or cannot translate definition specifically in Vietnamese, the General Department of Taxation accepts for Vietnam BAFS limited liability Company to reflect name of chemical products on VAT invoices by name of chemical formula in foreign language. Specified that to write additionally the phrase “sản phẩm hóa chất” (“chemical product”) before name of products written in foreign language when issuing invoices to clients.

Example:

Name of chemical commodity (chemical formula written in Germany): RHEOBUILD 561V

Name of the commodity mentioned above shall be reflected on invoice: "Sản phẩm hóa chất RHEOBUILD 561V” (“Chemical product RHEOBUILD 561V”)

Vietnam BASF limited liability Company shall be responsible for accuracy of information reflected on invoices.

The General Department of Taxation answers to the Company for information.