Different tax points for invoice lines

Accounting
1

Is there a way to add a date (such as when the job was undertaken) to each item in an invoice, apart from the invoice date itself and then be able to search that field?

I’m thinking in particular of tax points where: “This means you’ll need to know the time of supply for every transaction, so you can put it on the right VAT Return.” as quoted in hmrc site http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/vat/managing/returns-accounts/tax-points.htm

Without this date, how can an accurate VAT return be generated? Does quickfile assume the invoice date is the tax point?

2

Quick File would use the invoice date as the tax point date.

There isn’t a way of differentiating this, so I would suggest raising a different invoice for a different tax point, and separate them that way.

From QuickFile, you can’t search for particular invoice lines (in your scenario - different dates). You can however search by invoice date, so the above would cover both points.

Hope this helps

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3

Hmm, that could well be a problem. My accountant strongly advises that the supply of service date is my tax point - is he right be so insistent ie would hmrc see things differently?

4

What would be the problem with issuing a new invoice for every new tax point? Personally, I see this as a much cleaner way for reporting and just general logging.

I can’t argue with your accountant - I’m not an accountant myself, but maybe someone else could advise on this

5

Parker 1090 wrote: What would be the problem with issuing a new invoice for every new tax point?

Sometimes I can’t invoice at the time of delivery of services simply because of the remote location with no communications.
The invoice date is the date from which the due by date is calculated.
VAT returns get messy.
Some invoices can’t be produced until all the costs are in - individual invoices would annoy the client and quickly get out of hand.

6

I’m not sure of any software that actually supports varying tax points per invoice line? I think this would make the software massively complex and clutter the UI for the vast majority of users. In all honesty it’s not likely to be something we’ll take forward.

There’s an interesting discussion here related to this subject:

Here is a definition for the “Time of Supply” referenced from the HMRC website. It seems that by virtue of an invoice being issued that would automatically be assumed as the time of supply.

Time of supply for goods and services
The time of supply (tax point) for VAT purposes is defined as follows:
For transactions where no VAT invoice is issued (for example, sales to customers who aren’t registered for VAT) - the time of supply is normally the date the supply physically takes place (as defined below).
For transactions where there is a VAT invoice - the time of supply is normally the date of the invoice, even if this is before or after the date the supply physically took place (as defined below).

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