An invoice that never arrives is not an administrative hiccup: it is a line of losses. Without a compliant invoice, the VAT on a business expense is not deductible, whatever the payment proves on its own. Our guide on what to do when a supplier does not send the invoice explains how to recover it. This article puts a number on what every missing invoice costs.
The rule that turns silence into a loss
Article 271 of the French General Tax Code sets a formal condition for VAT deduction: holding a proper invoice. A till receipt, a card statement, a screenshot of the direct debit prove the payment, but none of these documents opens a right to deduction. Our article on the till receipt versus the invoice (FR) details that distinction.
Direct consequence: every business expense whose invoice is never obtained costs the amount of its VAT. That is not a risk: it is a bookkeeping certainty.
The basic calculation: VAT on the net price, not the total
The most common mistake is applying 20% to the price paid. VAT is computed on the pre-tax price included in the amount settled. Two formulas depending on the rate:
- VAT at 20% (fuel, tolls, car parks, washing): VAT = total × 20 ÷ 120, i.e. about 16.7% of the price paid.
- VAT at 10% (restaurants): VAT = total × 10 ÷ 110, i.e. about 9.1% of the price paid.
Applied to everyday expenses:
| Expense | Gross amount | Rate | VAT lost if the invoice is missing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tank fill, light commercial vehicle | €85 | 20% | €14.17 |
| Client meal | €48 | 10% | €4.36 |
| Airport parking | €62 | 20% | €10.33 |
| Van wash | €24 | 20% | €4.00 |
A single week on the road for a technician driving a van, with two tank fills, one meal and one parking, leaves more than €40 of VAT behind if no invoice is ever requested.
Two caveats change the sum. For a passenger car, only 80% of petrol and diesel VAT is deductible (Article 298, 4-1° a CGI): the €85 fill then carries €11.33 of recoverable VAT. And a staff hotel night is missing from the table on purpose: its VAT is never deductible, invoice or not (Article 206, IV-2-2° of Annex II to the CGI).
The annual calculation for a fleet
Take an SME with twenty vans, two tank fills per vehicle per month at €85 gross. Over a year, fuel amounts to €40,800 gross, of which €6,800 is recoverable VAT with the corresponding invoices.
Add the rest: some thirty business meals at €48, i.e. €1,440 gross and €131 of VAT. Car parks and tolls estimated at €3,600 gross, i.e. €600 of VAT.
That company’s annual pool exceeds €7,500 of VAT. If only a quarter of the invoices is never requested, the dry loss approaches €1,900 a year, purely for lack of systematic solicitation.
The hidden cost: chasing time
Obtaining an invoice takes time. Identifying the right contact, writing, following up, receiving, filing: assume twenty to thirty minutes per invoice in manual processing. At the fully-loaded hourly cost of an accounting department, each invoice chased by hand costs €15 to €30 of work.
The paradox then appears: manually chasing a €24 van-wash invoice containing €4 of VAT costs more in staff time than it brings in. That is precisely why these small expenses are never chased, and why they pile up. Only automated collection, where the marginal cost of a solicitation tends toward zero, makes this pool economically reachable.
The deduction window closes
VAT is deducted on the return of the period in which the invoice is received, with framed regularisation options. An invoice obtained eighteen months after the expense, or never, ends up outside deduction. Deadlines and the catch-up procedure are detailed in our article on deductible VAT regularisation (FR).
Another angle, often forgotten: the unjustified expense also weakens everything upstream. During a bookkeeping audit, missing invoices on a sample of expenses lead the inspector to question the whole series, as explained in our article on unrecovered VAT in companies (FR). The missing invoice costs twice: the lost VAT, and the weakened solidity of the rest of the file.
The yield of organised collection
A mandated collection platform changes the equation. Every expense is matched with its invoice, solicitations go out automatically to the right contact, follow-ups run their cadence, and it all lands in a monthly accounting export. How supplier invoice collection works is described on the product page, and the VAT recovery page details the tracking of the pool.
Facing the €2,000 to €8,000 identified above, the question is no longer whether invoices should be requested, but who does it at what unit cost.
Key takeaways
- No invoice, no deduction: the VAT of an un-invoiced expense is a certain loss.
- VAT is computed on the net price: about 16.7% of the gross at 20%, 9.1% at 10%.
- A fleet of twenty vehicles leaves more than €8,000 of recoverable VAT per year.
- A manual follow-up costs €15 to €30 of time: without automation, small supporting documents are never requested.