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are compulsory for drawing up negotiable instruments. If people use their
fingerprints or a signature stamp or affix a seal, the fingerprints, signature
stamp, or seal will not be deemed valid even if they are approved by
official authorities in due form.
For these reasons, it is not legal to use a signature stamp as a substitute
for the actual signature of a company’s signatory. Thus, in practice it is
likely that the signature stamp will be alleged to be illegal by the opposing
party in case of a dispute between the parties.
According to practices in tax law, it is obligatory to sign invoices. On
the other hand, taking into consideration the workload and the quantity
of invoices issued within a day, the Treasury Administration may enact
tax rulings which allow the use of signatures of the authorized signatories
approved by public notaries and printed by the printers on the invoices.
Even though the signature stamp can be considered to be valid in line
with this practice, as tax rulings are enacted for the specific institution for
which the opinion is granted and only that specific institution is exempted
from responsibility, it would be beneficial to require a tax ruling in favor
of the specific company in question.