Reverse Charge
Reverse charge is a scenario in Taxation, where, the tax paying entity creates a tax liability on it self.
One of the examples of this is India GST, where reverse charge needs to be applicable under specific scenarios, such as Purchase from Unregistered Vendors, Import of services and Purchase of specific Goods and Services.
To understand it better, let us take the an example. An organization purchases goods from a supplier. That supplier is not eligible/registered to pay taxes to government. The rule in that particular tax regime tells that, in such case, the buyer needs to create a tax liability on itself and submit the tax amount to government. This concept is called reverse charge.
Let’s talk about it from an accounting point of view.
Purchase without Reverse Charge (Regular Purchase)
In case of a normal purchase, the accounting entry will be as it below.
Vendor Cr 1100
Expenses Dr 900
Input Tax Dr 100
In this case, the buying organization pays the tax amount to the Vendor(in the payment against invoice), who in turn will submit it to the government.
Purchase with Reverse Charge
In case of a reverse charge, the accounting entry will be as below.
Vendor Cr 1000
Expenses Dr 1000
Input Tax Dr 100
Output Tax Cr 100
Here the Output tax line indicated that the organization is liable to pay the tax amount to Government directly.
Handling Reverse Charge in SAP
Through Reverse Charge Tax Code Set Up
i. Condition Type Set up in Tax Procedure.
Condition Type for Both components of the reverse charge needs to be set up in the tax procedure. In the below snapshot, ZP2 and ZP3 are these condition types.

ii. Define Tax code in FTXP Tcode
iii. Define GL accounts for these two components.
Then using this Tax code creates a document with reverse charge.
Vendor Cr 1000
Expenses Dr 1000
Input Tax Dr 100
Output Tax Cr 100
Please note that, for countries with condition based tax Procedure (India/Brazil) this will require a separate set up. That can be discussed as another section. The above explanation is applicable for countries with a formula based tax procedure.
Comments and suggestions are welcome.