Invoices after EOPT

The duty comes from Section 237 of the Tax Code: "all persons subject to an internal revenue tax" must issue an invoice for every sale of goods or services. The law says persons, not stores. A freelancer billing a client is squarely inside that sentence; having a shop, a DTI name, or the label sole proprietor was never the trigger. Earning taxable income is.

The Authority to Print exists because of Section 238: nobody may print invoices without BIR authority. That rule is the entire mechanism that makes an invoice official. The ATP ties every pad to your TIN and a fixed serial range, so a real invoice can be told apart from one made at home. Under the EOPT law the ATP itself is now free.

The design has a purpose. Self-employed income is self-declared, so the system needs source documents it can check your returns against. Unbroken serial numbers are what make undeclared sales detectable, and the invoice protects both sides: it is your client's proof of expense and your proof of declared income.

Online work changes nothing. RMC 60-2020 spelled out that people earning through digital channels, including freelancers and virtual assistants, are covered regardless of income level. A foreign client will never ask for a BIR invoice, so you issue it anyway and keep your copy. That stack of copies is what substantiates the income in your books when the BIR looks.

The 500-peso floor is also law, not folklore. EOPT raised it from 100 pesos and built three rules around it: issue per sale at or above the threshold, aggregate the day's smaller sales into one invoice at close of business, and issue for any amount the moment a buyer asks. The floor is indexed to inflation every three years, so it is a number to look up rather than memorise.

The aggregate rule is not a loophole for small sellers, it is the opposite. It means sales under 500 pesos are still recorded and still declared; the concession is only that they do not each need their own serial. Treating them as invisible is the mistake the rule was written to close.