Nature of a sale transaction according to Japanese legislation can be determined based on two law principles:
- A sale shall become effective when one of the parties promises to transfer certain real rights to the other party and the other party promises to pay the purchase price for it.
- Request for Issuance of Receipt: A person who has made a payment may request the person who received the payment to issue a certificate of receipt.
Japanese Civil Code recognises “sale” as one of the 13 categories of contracts.
In retail business a standard transaction is understood as a transaction conducted by a specified person with an unspecified and large number of persons as the counterparties, in which the uniformity of the whole or part of the transaction is reasonable to both parties.
From the statement above regarding the request for issuance of a receipt, the conclusion is that the receipt must be issued if the customer requests being provided with one.
However, in practice, receipts are issued in most of the cases, especially in retail stores of bigger retail chains.
A receipt is a document that proves that a payment has been made for a product or service when purchased. There is a principle of simultaneous performance of the goods/service provision and issuing receipts.
In practice different terms can be met such as: receipt, voucher, invoice and other expressions, but they are all considered the same, if general requirements are met. If the document contains the necessary elements, it is possible for it to be used for tax purposes (e.g. tax deduction by the recipient) no matter what kind of title does it bear.
Get in touch with JB Fiscal Consulting to get and/or to remain compliant with fiscalization requirements in Japan!