Booking import of goods invoices

I’m strugling how to find an easy way to book import invoices that will fit the Spanish requirements.
Our tax authority require us to pay VAT taxes for imports depending on the valution of goods.

This operation means booking the following operations:

  1. The supplier invoice to properly have the expense and the amount to pay. This invoice with without taxes.
  2. Then we need to create an invoice to report the value of the imported goods to the tax authorities. The base of this invoice is determined by the custom agency and we need to pay the related taxes to the custom agency.
  3. When need to book an invoice for the customs agency services. This is like any other national services invoice.

The main diculties are from point 2 because:

  • We need to report the tax base on account.tax.line but the expense should be zero (this means a move line with no amount but a tax line with the base amount). I’m not sure if this is suported by Tryton.
  • The tax amount should be paid to the customs agency (they will pay it to the tax authority) despite the invoice 2 being related to supplier. So we should find a way to relate the amount to pay to a party diferent to the supplier.

How other countries book import invoices? Do any countries have similar situation?

I do not understand these sentences.

Why? I do not think customs should be managed by the tax report because as you said you pay directly to a custom agency via an invoice.

I do not see the point to nitpicking on this. You receive the invoice from the custom agency so you use them as party. Later you just have to use the landed cost to apply the customs to the cost price.

Because the tax authority requires to include into tax reporting VATs related to custom.
In this reporting we should use the estimated value for the customs agency as base and the paid amount as amount.

This is the main dificulty because we need diferent values for reporting and invoice.

One may solve this by creating two lines on the invoice. For example if the goods has been values at 100€ we should create the following:

  • A line with amount 100€ with the import tax (to correctly compute the base and tax amount).
  • A second line with amount -100€ and without tax (to remove the base from the expenses).

But i’m wondering if we can find a solution that allows the user to just input the amount, the import tax and properly compute all the accouting values.

The problem is that the tax authority requires use to report the invoice (on VAT Book but also on SII) using the supplier as party. If we use the custom agency as party then we will have wrong values there.

Indeed we have also other cases that we may receive an invoice which is paid to another party. For example, if I order my accountant some services which require to pay registry expenses I will get an expense invoice for the registry agent but as the accountant paid for it on the moment of requiring the services I will owe the money to the accountant and not to the registry agent.
So probably we may have a proper solution for both.

I still do not understand. Are you talking about VAT on the customs or the customs that must be reported with the VAT?

Yes it is Invoice delegation

VAT on the customs.
But as we paid taxes for it we should include it on the tax reporting with the proper amounts, which are only known when the customs agency values them.

Great, i did not remember that we already discussed it :exploding_head:

In the Netherlands we have the situation of two imports:

  1. from inside the EU
  2. from outside the EU

In both cases the invoice have no taxes, We have to kind of “pay” taxes, but we directly can ask the taxes back so in total all is zero. The tax authority in this way knows that we have imported goods / services.

In our report to the tax authority the amounts are on different places in the report. What I did was to create a child tax with the same negative percentage as it’s parent. On the invoice there are two tax lines created that way, one with a positive and another with a negative amount.

When we import goods from outside the EU, customs comes into play, They send an invoice which is handled like any other invoice.

Hi,

Thanks for sharing your experience!

We also have the same situation. In this case I’m talinkg about import outside of the EU.

This is exactly what we do for inside EU invoices but we do not consider them as import.

But this invoice is only related to the customs services or it includes any information about goods?
If it’s only for customs services this is the invoice that I mention on point 3.

I have to say I haven’t a lot of experience with it. In my case DHL was the carrier and they send me an invoice for the vat and extra charges. They also included an extra page with information about the goods where the goods came from, it’s value and tax just to make clear why they send you the invoice at all. Because the invoice came from DHL Netherlands it was handled like any other invoice.

So in the end I payed the vat about the imported goods this way, but the original invoice has no taxes.

What you explain is exactly the same situation like us, with the main diference that for reporting we need to use the supplier as party of the customs and also include the goods value and applied tax.

So I see no problem. You create an invoice with the data of the customs agency on which you have the customs fee and the VAT that applies to it.

The problem is that we should also include the Goods value to properly have a VAT computation.
And as this goods vale has been already included on Tryton using the supplier invoice we should not include it as expense otherwise we will have booked two expenses for the same invoice

I do not understand. Is the VAT not based on the customs fee? Why are you paying VAT on non-eu importation ? Who is going to recover this VAT ?

No, for importing the VAT is based on the goods value which is determined by the customs agency and its diferent from the price paid to the supplier.

The VAT is paid but the company will recover it on when does the Tax Declaration with the authorities (like other national VAT paid).

Let me put an example: I import 10.000$ goods from United States. I will pay this amount to the supplier. Then customs agency provides a document (called DUA in Spain) which contains the goods valuation from the customs agency and the VAT to pay. This means the following information:

  • Amount paid: 7000€ (the 10.000$ after currency exchange)
  • Goods Value: 6500€ (this is estimated by customs)
  • VAT to pay: 6500€ * 0.21 (Using normal VAT rate): 1365€

With this values I pay 1365€ to the customs agency for the VAT.

In order to recover the VAT I need to include the following values on VAT declaration:

  • Import Base Amount: 6500€
  • Import Tax Amount: 1365€

The tax amount will be compensated from VAT declaration like other National VAT (but it is reported on a separate tax code).

As said, the problem is is with the Import Base Amount (6500€) which I should include on the VAT report but not on the invoice amount to paid. For now the only solution possible is to create two lines that compensate. Following the example this should be booked as follow:

  • Line with amount 6500€ related to the import Tax. Tryton will compute 1365€ as Tax for this line
  • Line with amount -6500€ related to any tax.

With this setup the invoice has the right accounting values both for amount to pay (we only pay taxes) and also for reporting (because we only include the first line on tax reporting).

The drawback is this generates a credit and a debit of 6500€ for expense account which may compensate and that it’s easy for users to forget something in the progress. That’s why I’m wondering if we can find a solution which make’s it simpler for the user (add only one line with the proper values and tryton will compute the right amounts).

This is just for the invoice of point 2, invoices of point 1 and 3 will be computed using normal VAT (no vat for supplier invoices and national VAT for custom services)

Ok so it is not really an invoice.

So what you need is a document that adds tax lines on an existing invoice (and maybe an invoice line). This could be done by creating a new move between the payable account of the customs service and the tax account. The line on the tax account would have a tax line for the base and another for the tax.
The tax reports will need to consider such move and correctly link them to the right party.

Yes and not. It’s is not and invoice but it should treated as is because it should be included on both VAT Book and SII as it’s a supplier invoice. On both reports we should use the Value of Goods as base.

Sounds interesting and I think is doable.

This document should ask the user the following information:

  • Company
  • Original Invoice (Many2one to Supplier invoice, posted or paid)
  • Party (respresenting the customs service)
  • Customs Document Number (required and manually filled by the user)
  • Value of Goods (in company currency)
  • Taxes (I should have a domain to include only import taxes)
  • Move (A many2One to the resulting move, readonly)
  • State: Draft/Posted

Once posted the account move is created.

Next question is: Does it sound like something specific for spain (to be added as part of account_es) or do you think it can be added as generic module?

I’m wondering if it will not be simpler that on invoice the manual tax line create also on the move line of the tax a ‘base’ tax line for the base amount.

Just give your suggestion a quick test and yes it sound like an easy solution for the problem.
In this case, creating the invoice with no lines (but with taxes lines) will be enought to have the proper reporting.

I just filled Issue 10429: Create base tax line for manual invoice taxes - Tryton issue tracker which includes a patch for it if anyone is interested on testing it!