[Erp5-dev] person and vat code

[Jean-Paul Smets]

Hi,

The analysis related to vat_code is incorrect. Let me explain why, since 
we had the same situation when we implemented the registry of commerce 
in a certain country and the only VAT registration system in that same 
country.

A Person represents a physical person. A Person does not have, as such, 
a vat code. A Person of course has other codes in relation with 
individual taxes or social insurances. This number usually identifies 
that person in a unique manner.

In some countries, people can have a private business. They often must 
be registered to a kind of business registry before they can do business.

In the end, there are 2 different documents:
a- the physical person entity -> Person in ERP5
b- the moral person entity which represents the business -> Organisation 
in ERP5

So, if someone wants to do business as himself in ERP5, he should create
- one Person which represents himself as physical entity
- one Person which represents his/her business

The idea behind that is that a business can start as an individual 
business (ie. handled by a single Person) and later evolve into a 
corporation, yet retain the same name, clients, etc. A business is 
therefore always a moral person, not an individual person. So, the 
conclusion is simple: use Organisation if you want to define businessed 
operated by individuals and Person to represent the owner of that 
individual business.

The only reason which could justify adding vat_code to a Person would be 
a case in which:
- a private individual (Person) acts as a consumer (ie. not as an 
individual business)
- purchases a product from a given supplier (Organisation)
- and is requested a vat_code from that that supplier

If you prefer: vat_code is delivered to private individuals which are 
not doing any business and are not registered as moral person in any 
form. I am not aware of any such case anywhere.

About vat_code, codes, Person and Organisation. I only see the current 
issues nowadays in ERP5:
1- codes are multivalued in reality (they are single valued now). It is 
necessary to extend codes in a way similar to prices for resources or 
addresses for Person/Organisation ie. with subobjects and a default 
value. A given person can have multiple codes (ex. social, tax) which 
are unique for a given country.
2- codes currently consist of corporate_registration_code, social_code, 
vat_code, geographic_incorporate_code, activity_code. All of them are 
related to concepts which are universal worldwide. Some codes are 
missing though (ex. tax_code). I am interested in making a list of codes 
which is both universal and covers all cases.

Regards,

JPS.







Vera Kurpas a écrit :
> On Wed, 2009-02-04 at 17:32 +0100, Bartek Gorny wrote:
>   
>> Hello,
>>
>> I just noticed that the Organisation property sheet provides a
>> vat_code property, but the Person property sheet does not, so a person
>> has no vat_code. The Person has only a "social_code".
>>     
>
>   
>> I don't know about France, but in Poland every organisation and every
>> person has a Tax Identification Number (NIP), which in case of a
>> person is used e.g. for filing annual tax forms, and of an
>> organisation for vat settlements, invoicing and everything else. Also,
>> if someone starts doing business and pays VAT, he uses his personal
>> NIP for vat settlements. In many accounting, financial, trade and
>> other applications NIP is used to property identify a
>> person/organisation and to make sure it is unique system-wide.
>>     
>
>   
>> As far as the "social code" is concerned - I don't know what it is in
>> France, but in Poland I'd interpret is as the PESEL number, which is a
>> unique number assigned to every citizen - and this would be
>> consistent, because organisations do not have PESELs.
>>     
> The same situation is in Russia except the fact that person can have VAT
> number even he does not carry on business for better salary tax
> registration. VAT is mandatory required for someone who starts doing
> business. VAT for Person differ from Company VAT by quantity of numbers.
> The presence of the social code is obligatory for every citizen.
>   
>> So, the question is: is it similar in other countries? If so, would it
>> be a good idea to give a vat_code to a Person type and catalog it? 
>>     
> I think vat_code should be in Person form and be catalogued for search
> and sorting purposes.
>
>   
>> If
>> not, then maybe a localisation template should provide it?
>>
>> Bartek
>>
>>     
>
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