EU - electronic invoicing

2 March 2022

On 16 February 2022, the European parliament voted in favour of harmonising electronic invoicing (e-invoicing) rules across the EU. 

A growing list of EU countries, including France, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia have or will be introducing e-invoice systems. These systems typically require taxpayers to validate their B2B invoices with the relevant country's tax authorities before issuing these to their customers. It is thought that introducing e-invoicing will prevent common errors on invoices and help prevent VAT fraud within the EU.

The EU parliament has acknowledged that although some EU member states are and have already adopted various forms of e-invoicing, these new initiatives must be harmonised to make it easier for affected businesses to implement the new requirements and to make the transfer of data between tax authorities more efficient. 

This will now be considered by the EU Council before a decision is taken on whether new e-invoicing rules should be harmonised across EU member states.