The difference between an official receipt and a receipt (發票和收據的分別)
When I was in Ningbo, I noticed a lot of patrons in restaurants and other places of business wanted official receipts when they were paying their bills – an official receipt issued will have the customer’s company name on it.
I was told that with an official receipt one can charge the expanse or expanses against his business’s annual income, just like we do business in North America.
From my casual observation and with the information my contacts and acquaintances told me, people running a business can pretty much claim or charge anything against his income – for example – entertainment expanses, it could be broad and vague in some instances.
Wining and dinning is nothing new in business practices, but karaoke expanses are routinely being lumped together with other legitimate expanses, and that could be a stretch, because the bills could easily came to thousands of dollars, with all the inflated prices in a night club.
The taxmen are pretty smart and updated with all the tricks businessmen played, and they must have filtered the word down pretty thoroughly to all the business outlets under the charge of each taxation district, some business/restaurants will give ten percent off the top of the bill if the patron does not demand an official receipt from the business establishment.
A regular receipt will cut a lot of book keeping and paper work off the business’s accounting department. And it will probably be a lot less hassles for the restaurant or night club in the future if a patron runs afoul with the tax man and his books are under scrutiny, it can go back quite a few years just like in North America.
The taxman just might want to know a few years down the road from the day the “official receipt” was issued to so and so patron for a few thousand dollars expanses, so why bother, give them ten percent off, and eliminate future potential hassles.