K pojetí a právní úpravě faktury

The article is concerned with the invoice – a relatively important instrument employed primarily in business activities. The text gives an outline of the development of invoice regulation, states the current situation and looks at the concept and the function of the invoice. It concludes with a de lege ferenda reflection. A brief account of the development of its legal regulation goes back to the year 1948 when, with the planned economy just beginning, the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Technology issued their first decrees on invoicing investment as well as non-investment deliveries. For decades the two types of invoicing were kept separate, since non-investment deliveries were paid either from the operational or budgetary monetary means while the investment deliveries were only paid from the investment sources. The article focuses on the invoice regulations in codes, the Civil and Commercial Codes in particular. It was in the Commercial Code that invoice regulation was particularly detailed; yet it empowered the respective ministries to issue implementary regulations governing invoices made out for investment as well as non-investment deliveries. It was only in May 1990 that the Commercial Code amendment abolished the invoice implementary regulations and provided for a single invoice suitable for both types of deliveries. At present there is no legal invoice regulation in force. However, the invoice is commonly referred to by a number of legal prescriptions, various ministerial regulations, Commercial Code commentaries and articles written by legal experts. The term is ordinarily used in business and civil law relations. In this context an important issue arises, namely, setting the term of the invoice payment in the case that the term has not been specified in the contract. In a rather complicated way, it then has to be derived from other provisions of the Commercial Code, more specifically those regulating the terms of performance. In spite of the non-existent legal regulation, the invoice can be defined as the creditor’s appeal to the debtor that he should pay the agreed or otherwise determined price of whatever the consideration. At present not only can deliveries be invoiced – as was the practice in the past – but the value of damage inflicted or the interests on the amount in default, to give some examples, can be invoiced as well. Yet the obligation to make out an invoice and to state certain terms in it can currently result only from a contract made by the creditor and the debtor. If there be no such provision in the contract, then the invoice can be replaced by any other document or there can be no document at all. We consider the absence of invoice regulation to be rather unfortunate. De lege ferenda a regulation of the most important legal terms of the invoice should be available in the Civil Code as fundamental prescription of civil law. This regulation would be applied unless there was an agreement to the contrary.