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Executive summary

As background the United States has approximately 7500 tax jurisdictions at three levels:
1) There is one Federal tax juridition covering the entire country. At the corporate level this primarily taxes corporate profits and there is also an important federal excise tax on motor fuel and highway usage.

Legal aspects

The Internal Revenue Service (http://www.irs.gov/) is the body responsible for collecting federal taxes.
2) There are 50 states in the United States each with their own tax codes. Taxes impacting the invoices at this level include: use, sales, and lease taxes. Additionally corporate profits are often taxed.
3) There are over 7000 other tax jurisdictions within the 50 states at the county and city level. Taxes impacting the invoices at this level include: use, sales, and lease taxes. Additionally corporate profits are often taxed.
Taxation related to invoices primarily occurs at the state and local level. Many taxes can be deducted from the corporate P&L statement therefore state and local taxes need to be accurately accounted for by businesses to ensure they do no over pay taxes.

Taxes are often charged by the seller on the invoice and the buyer pays the tax to the seller who pays it to the government. The buyer is still responsible to make sure that they pay the correct tax. Many large buyers have 'direct pay permits' with their major tax authorities and pay their own taxes. This eliminates risk that smaller sellers incorrectly calculate tax or do not pay it in a timely fashion.

The US tax system is a voluntary system and relies on individual entities to pay their taxes accurately. The United States has a Federal Tax Court (http://www.ustaxcourt.gov/) that was established by Congress under Article I of the U.S. Constitution.
Each state has its own judicial system. Most tax issues are treated as civil matters and rely on the expense of an audit combined with the risk of fines, late fees, and interest to drive compliance. In the case of fraud, executives and financial staff can be sent to prison. In the United States many criminals who were difficult to prosecute for their actual crimes were ultimately convicted and emprisoned for tax fraud!

The United States has few regulations on the content and transmission of the invoice. There are some regulations however on the transmission of personally identifable data and credit card numbers. For example, the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act (FACTA) of 2003 requires that printed receipts mask the credit card number. Industry self-regulation actually provides stronger and more responsible data security standards.
For example credit card companies such as Visa and Mastercard rely on the groups such as the PCI Security Standards Council (https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org/) to provide security standards and audit mechanisms which can move much more quickly than central governments in response to changing threats and technologies.

For further questions, please feel free to contact Gary Neights at gneights@elemica.com.

Important links:

The Internal Revenue Service http://www.irs.gov/

The United States has a Federal Tax Court http://www.ustaxcourt.gov/

PCI Security Standards Council https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org/