The VAT book in Malta: fiscal receipt or tax invoice

A painter in Marsaskala — a bajjad working alone — finishes a two-day repaint in a flat, is paid 640 euro in cash at the door, and writes it out on a duplicate pad he bought with his paint. The customer is happy, the money is in the van, and the document is worth nothing: a fiscal receipt in Malta comes out of a book the tax administration issues, and a pad from a stationer is not one.

That is the whole of the confusion behind the phrase "the VAT book". It is not a ledger and it is not optional stationery. It is a numbered book, it is ordered from the authority, and it is the document a private customer is entitled to.

One word before the substance, because it decides what you type into a search box and what you print on a page. The tax is taxxa fuq il-valur miżjud in Maltese and VAT in English, and they are the same tax — but the forms, the schedules and the receipt book itself are English, so VAT is what belongs on the document. The Maltese word is the one you will hear on site; the English one is the one the Commissioner reads.

Two documents, and it is the customer who decides which

Malta splits outgoing documents by who is receiving them, not by what the job was.

Article 50 requires a person registered under article 10, making a supply other than an exempt without credit supply to another registered person, to issue a tax invoice with the particulars of the Twelfth Schedule. A business registered under article 11 instead is outside that duty, because it makes no supply on which VAT is charged — which registration you hold, and what it costs either way, is worked through in Article 11 VAT in Malta, or Article 10: which is cheaper.

Article 51 catches everything else, and its wording is the clearest sentence in the whole area:

Any person who makes any supply, other than an exempt without credit supply or other than a supply in respect of which a tax invoice is required to be issued in terms of article 50, shall provide to the person to whom the supply is made an invoice, receipt or other document which shall be issued in the form and in the manner and shall contain the particulars set out in the Thirteenth Schedule.

So the practical test at the end of a job is a single question: is this customer registered for VAT? A homeowner in Marsaskala is not, and gets a fiscal receipt. A kuntrattur running the block, or a property management company, is registered, and gets a tax invoice. The same work, the same price, two different pieces of paper — and the one that decides is a fact about the customer that should be settled when the customer is taken on, not at the door with the money in your hand.

Which number identifies that customer, and how you check it before you rely on it, is a question of its own: VAT number and VAT certificate in Malta: what each is for.

How to order a VAT book — and why it is not stationery

The fiscal receipt system splits by trade. Retailers and caterers issue their fiscal receipts from a fiscal cash register. A service business that writes receipts by hand — which is what most trade businesses do on site — uses a VAT fiscal receipt book, and those books come from the tax administration.

They are ordered through the administration's online service, and since 9 September 2019 they are collected from and returned to MaltaPost rather than from a counter at the department. Two things follow that are worth planning around rather than discovering:

• You cannot buy more on a Friday. Running out of receipt numbers is not like running out of paper. Order the next book while there is a third of the current one left.
• The used book goes back. The books are duplicate books and the completed ones are returned, which is also why the copies are not yours to file loosely.

What has to be on the tax invoice

The Twelfth Schedule list is short and every item of it is checkable:

The unit price is the one to look at hardest. A trade invoice written as a single line — "bathroom refurbishment, 1,507.04 euro" — carries a quantity of one and a unit price equal to the total, which satisfies the letter of the Schedule but tells the customer nothing and makes a query six months later a matter of memory. Every rate on a Maltese building job is the same 18 per cent anyway, for the reasons in Eighteen per cent, every time: VAT on building work in Malta, so splitting the lines costs you no tax argument and settles every other one.

This is the point at which the tool matters more than the discipline. In Zirko the outgoing number series is issued by the server as an unbroken sequence, so two people invoicing from two phones cannot produce two documents with the same number — and a finished invoice can no longer be edited, because the correction to an issued document is a credit note or a cancellation with its own number. What Zirko does not do is decide whether your customer is registered: that goes on the customer record, from the number he gives you, and it is only as right as the day you checked it.

The fifteenth day of the next month

A tax invoice has to be issued by the fifteenth day of the month following the chargeable event, or the date a payment is received, whichever comes earlier.

The second half is the one that catches trade businesses. A deposit taken in February starts the clock in February, even if the job runs to April. The limit of the rule is worth stating alongside it: it is a deadline for issuing, not for being paid, and it says nothing about when the customer has to settle. That second clock is set by the Commercial Code rather than the VAT Act, and where the contract is silent it runs thirty days from the debtor's receipt of the invoice — see debt collection in Malta: interest, costs and the judicial letter.

The 100 euro form, and why a trade job rarely fits it

A simplified invoice is allowed where the total including tax does not exceed 100 euro, and it carries a shorter list: the date, the supplier's VAT identification number, the type of goods or services, and the VAT amount or the information to work it out. A call-out, a washer, a replacement cartridge.

Anything with a warranty, a retention or a certificate behind it should get the full particulars even where the amount would allow the short form. The hundred euro is a ceiling on the amount, not a judgement about the job.

Two lines you can copy onto tonight's document

For a fiscal receipt to a private customer, written out of the book, the line that removes every later argument:

Repainting of stairwell and landing, Flat 4, Triq is-Salina — labour 2 days, materials included. Total 640.00 euro. VAT included at 18 %: 97.63 euro.

For a tax invoice to a registered customer, the line that makes it a document rather than a figure:

Item 1.1 — Installation hours, water supply: 26.00 hrs at 42.00 euro = 1,092.00 euro. Item 1.2 — Basin mixer tap, chrome: 1 pc at 110.08 euro = 110.08 euro. Net total 1,507.04 euro · plus 18 % VAT 271.27 euro · gross total 1,778.31 euro. Customer VAT identification number: the eight digits he gave you, written in the Maltese form MT followed by the number.

The second block is not longer because the law is fussier. It is longer because the customer will put it into his own return, and every particular he is missing comes back to you as a phone call.

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Position as at 24 September 2026. This article describes the law and is not tax advice. The Thirteenth Schedule and the categories of business required to use a fiscal cash register rather than a manual book are amended by legal notice from time to time; if your trade sits near the edge of the retail or catering definitions, read the current Schedule before assuming the book is still enough.

What Zirko does here: the document a customer gets follows the customer record rather than somebody's memory, the number series is unbroken and issued once, and an issued invoice cannot be altered afterwards. What Zirko does not do is print your fiscal receipt book — that one comes from the tax administration, on paper, and no software replaces it.