Regarding settlements in trade, public catering and services

Business entities during 2020 – 2021 filed lawsuits to the courts of various instances in Ukraine to declare illegal certain sections and/or the Regulations on the form and content of settlement documents/electronic settlement documents, approved by Order of the Ministry of Finance of Ukraine № 13 as of 21.01.2016 (hereinafter - Regulations), in terms of determining mandatory requisites for various types of settlement documents.

Supreme Court, by its decision as of 04.08.2022 in case № 640/18441/20, supported position of the Ministry of Finance of Ukraine and the State Tax Service of Ukraine, which is as follows.

Forms of settlement documents, approved by Regulations in the form of unified tables containing separate defined fields, and content of settlement document conveys information that must be specified by taxpayers in a form prescribed by the form, in a field prescribed by the form – are requisites of settlement documents.

By itself, the form and content of settlement documents do not require taxpayers to fulfill any additional duties regarding administration of taxes and/or levies. But it is illogical to exclude individual fields from the check form, if the payer is not required to fill them in. Moreover, in the absence of certain data, regardless of an obligation to enter them in the check form, information in the corresponding field of the check is not filled.

At the same time, absence of mandatory requisites of settlement documents, provided that information is available and in accordance with the taxpayer’s obligation to fill in the relevant fields of the check form with information, will lead to the recognition of such settlement documents as inappropriate.

Taking into account the above specified, please note that filling in the fields of settlement document form is mandatory only if the taxpayer has information that is directly related to it and corresponds to the content of settlement document that is being formed.

Here are some examples:

do not fill in fields for the VAT payers, who are not payers of this tax – alternative way of filling in is "No VAT";

payers who are not the single tax payers do not fill such fields – alternative way of filling in is " No excise tax";

do not fill in field code of Ukrainian classification of the FEA products for goods that are not excisable.

Given examples are not exclusive.