Originally Posted by NewNick

They dont, you missed the point.

But it is really very simple.

In order to stop tax evasion and money laundering etc EU law dictates that there should be a paper trail for all transactions. Thats it. Send an invoice - get paid.

Now if a company gets an audit from their tax authority they simply need to show where the money has gone, and where it arrived from. Therefore not doing this correctly is a lot of hassle for the business owner if the tax inspector comes knocking.

So because this is GFY there is 4 pages of bitching about raising an invoice, attaching it to an email, and getting paid. Bizarrely how any of you run a business without a paper trail for your own accounting purposes is quite odd.