Uber Technologies Inc’s Taiwan branch is expected to issue electronic uniform invoices by the end of this year as required by the Ministry of Finance (MOF), the company said on Tuesday last week.
Uber customers currently receive a service notification via e-mail, but that notification is not a receipt and does not have a numerical code, prevently customers from participating in the uniform invoice lottery operated by the government.
As the ministry requires cross-border e-commerce operators to issue electronic uniform invoices, Uber Taiwan said it is establishing its own system to issue the receipts.
“Passengers who purchase ride services through the Uber app or consumers who pay for the food delivery service through the UberEats app would all get the receipts via e-mail,” Uber Taiwan communications officer Jessica Pan (潘瑞蓮) told the Taipei Times by telephone.
Pan said that Uber has been paying business taxes since resuming services in Taiwan in 2017 and does not expect the issuance of electronic uniform invoices to increase its tax burden.
“But the offering of receipts would give consumers a little happiness as they might win the lottery,” she said.
Uber declined to specify when it would start issuing the receipts, but the Taxation Administration said that the firm plans to launch the system in November at the earliest, an official surnamed Lin (林) said by telephone.
So far, five global e-commerce companies have begun issuing uniform invoices, including Japan-based Sony Interactive Entertainment Inc, Google Asia Pacific Pte Ltd, UpToDate Inc, Digital River GmbH and Various Inc, Lin said.
A total of 120 offshore companies are required to issue electronic uniform invoices by the end of this year or they will be fined, but they are allowed to issue receipts in languages other than Chinese, National Taxation Bureau of Taipei Director-General Hsu Tzu-mei (許慈美) said by telephone last week.
“It is Taiwan’s custom to run a state lottery by including the eight-digit numbers written on the uniform receipts, so some foreign companies have to spend some time understanding the system and adapting to it,” Hsu said.
Issuing the receipts should help the bureau collect tax information such as the companies’ revenue and would allow the bureau to determine if they declare their taxes correctly, she said.
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