[paulcole]

He said in his tweet about this that when he does it to Europeans (specifically Germans, I think) they just get even madder.

I mean great if there are legal requirements for invoices, but who enforces them, how likely is enforcement, and what’s the end result for a US-based company with no physical presence in The Netherlands?

[petercooper]

The real issue is with the local (European) company when they claim the expense against profits and the tax inspector turns their nose up at the invoice/receipt.

Being in the UK, we tend to work on a system where things are taken in context and you can defend such decisions. Maybe other tax regimes are more restrictive, but the British way is always that you can have a debate with authorities and usually they will see sense in your reasoning if you're not trying to defraud them.

[avree]

Just to make this kind of confusing story less confusing—the Pinboard guy prints valid invoices (in order to be legally compliant, and because he's "not a totally evil guy"). Someone (from Germany) asked him to add Company Name to the invoice, and he replied by saying "just edit the HTML to add whatever you need".

https://twitter.com/i/status/1192182812121583617 The actual tweets probably explain it better than I (and the parent comment) can.

[paulcole]

Ha, the tweets I remember are from years and years ago. Maybe 2015? Really funny that the invoice thing has been such a consistent part of the Pinboard Experience for so long.

Since this predates threads, I can’t find all the tweets but this is one of them:

https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/558313726844358656

[paulcole]

That all sounds like the local company's problem right?

If they want to claim the expense they can find a competing company who issues an invoice.