What a Maltese tax invoice has to show

The particulars

Cap. 406's Twelfth Schedule is the list. A tax invoice carries your name and address, the customer's VAT number where the supply calls for it, the nature and quantity of what was supplied, and the taxable value and the VAT as separate figures rather than a single total.

Discounts are on the list too. If you gave one, the document has to show it, because a discount changes the taxable value rather than sitting outside it. That's the Seventh Schedule, which governs taxable value, and it's a different schedule from the one that governs when VAT becomes chargeable. The two get confused often enough that it's worth naming both.

The numbering rule, which is where general software slips

Invoice numbers run in a sequence, and the sequence has to hold. That sounds obvious until you think about what most software does when you've made a mistake: it offers to delete the invoice. Delete number 14 and your books run 13, 15, and you have no answer for the question a VAT inspector will ask.

The correct move is to cancel or credit the document. The number stays in the series, the history stays attached, and the sequence still explains itself. Settlano won't delete a sent invoice for that reason: cancelling keeps the number as a retained void.

A credit note is itself an invoice under the Twelfth Schedule, and it has to say which document it amends. The schedule also permits more than one series, so credit notes can have their own sequence as long as each sequence is unbroken on its own.

The parts that aren't printed on the invoice at all

These are the ones no general invoicing tool can be expected to know, because they aren't invoicing features at all. They're tax rules that happen to depend on what you invoiced.

The tax point. The date VAT becomes chargeable is not always the invoice date. It's the earlier of the supply happening and a payment arriving, with a proviso that can move it to the invoice date. It decides which return the supply belongs in, so a tool recording only an invoice date can put a supply in the wrong quarter without anything looking wrong.

The €35,000 line. Turnover's counted by supply date across the calendar year, and crossing it starts a 15 day clock to apply for Article 10. Software that totals what it has invoiced is not measuring the same thing.

Which VAT treatment applies. A service to a business in another member state, a supply exempt without credit, one outside the scope entirely: each goes in a different box on the return and some carry no VAT at all. A rate field with a percentage in it cannot express that distinction.

Questions to ask whatever you use

Including ours. None of these need a lawyer to answer, and all of them are things you'd rather find out now than in an audit.

• Can it delete a sent invoice? If yes, that's a gap in your numbering waiting to happen.
• Does it show taxable value and VAT separately? One combined total is not what the schedule asks for.
• Does a credit note keep its own unbroken series, and name what it amends?
• Does it record a supply date distinct from the invoice date? If there's only one date field, it cannot know your tax point.
• Does it know Article 11 from Article 10? A generic tax-rate field usually doesn't.
• Does it track the €35,000 threshold by supply date? Most tools total invoices instead, which is a different figure.

The short version

General invoicing software will make you a document that looks right. Whether it's right in the ways Malta cares about depends on questions most of it was never built to answer, and the answers only surface when somebody asks for your records.

If your tool passes the six questions above, keep it. If it doesn't, at least you now know which parts you're carrying yourself.

Common questions