Issuance and Content of Invoices Regulated by as Many as 6 Laws

As many as six laws in Croatia regulate the obligation to issue and the content of invoices for sold goods or services.

Croatian entrepreneurs must, on one hand, ensure proper conduct towards the customer, whether the customer is another entrepreneur or the end consumer, and on the other hand, comply with the authorizations of state bodies that control and supervise the application of these regulations.
Four laws that govern this matter are directly under the jurisdiction of the Tax Administration, as part of the Ministry of Finance. These are the General Tax Law, the Value Added Tax Act, the Cash Transactions Fiscalization Act, and the Income Tax Act. Of course, each of these laws also has implementing regulations, which are generally more detailed and extensive than the laws themselves. The fifth is the Accounting Act, whose application is also supervised by the Ministry of Finance, and for commercial companies, the provisions on the minimum content of business papers regulated by the Companies Act are important.

News from July 1 For all taxpayers, the obligation to issue invoices and exemptions from this obligation are regulated by the General Tax Law. Every taxpayer is obliged to issue an invoice to the customer. The minimum content of the invoice for cash transactions is also prescribed. The invoice must minimally contain information about the supplier, the number and date of issuance of the invoice, the usual commercial name of the delivered goods or services, and the total amount of compensation that includes the charged tax, classified according to tax rates.
Entrepreneurs who are VAT payers must adapt the obligation to issue and the content of the invoice to the requirements from Articles 78 to 82 of the VAT Act. In addition to the elements regulated by the General Tax Law, they must include at least eight additional pieces of information in the content of the invoice. Among other things, the invoice must contain the VAT number of the supplier and the VAT number of the recipient of the delivery, the date of delivery, the unit price of the delivered goods and services, the VAT rate, the amount of VAT classified according to tax rates, and the total amount of tax and fees. Invoices issued by taxpayers who pay VAT according to issued invoices no longer need to have the R-1 designation, but individuals who pay VAT according to collected invoices even after July 1, 2013, must indicate the R-2 designation on their outgoing invoices along with a special note indicating that they are VAT payers according to collected fees.

Simplified Invoice The new VAT Act also recognizes the so-called simplified invoice with fewer mandatory elements that can be issued for deliveries up to the amount of 700 kuna. The VAT Act from July 1, 2013, also introduces the obligation to state monetary amounts in kuna, even when it comes to invoices issued for deliveries to other EU member states and third countries. It is not an obstacle if amounts stated in kuna are accompanied by amounts in any other currency.
In all cases where a VAT taxpayer issues an invoice for a delivery that is exempt from VAT or where VAT is not paid because the tax obligation is transferred to the buyer, the invoice must state in a special note the article of the VAT Act based on which the invoice was issued without tax.
Entrepreneurs bound by the Cash Transactions Fiscalization Act, which includes all corporate income tax payers and self-employment income tax payers, must also align the content of outgoing invoices with this regulation, which means they must comply with the provisions on the method of numbering invoices with three-part designations, respecting the sequence rule they have chosen in the general act (invoices can be numbered according to business premises or according to payment devices), and they must also include data on the time of issuance (hour and minute), the designation of the operator who issued the invoice, the payment method designation, and for invoices subject to the fiscalization process, also the protective code of the invoice issuer and the unique invoice identifier assigned by the Tax Administration.

Can Be Without a Stamp According to the Accounting Act, an invoice as a credible document must contain data that allows a professional person to understand the content of the recorded business event from that document. The Accounting Act even stipulates the obligation of the person authorized to represent the entrepreneur or the person to whom the authority has been transferred to confirm by signature that the document is credible and orderly. The invoice does not need to have the stamp of the entrepreneur who issued it.
If we take into account the requirements from the Companies Act that regulate the mandatory content of business papers for all legal forms of commercial companies and sole traders, it follows that it is not simple to list all mandatory elements of the invoice. It is almost redundant to say that in such normative regulation, entrepreneurs find it difficult to navigate, leading to violations of regulations that are often not caused by intentional avoidance of legal obligations.