Germany proposes to introduce mandatory B2B e-invoicing and reporting from January 2026

31 July 2023

Germany’s Federal Ministry of Finance (Bundesministerium der Finanzen) is proposing the introduction of a new mandatory real-time invoice-reporting regime for resident businesses. 
This new regime will impact resident businesses that sell to other VAT-registered businesses in the country only and will force these businesses to declare their sales to the German tax authorities via a new e-invoicing platform. This is instead of sending invoices to their customers directly.

If accepted, the soft implementation date for this new regime will be 1 January 2025, meaning paper or PDF invoices can still be issued up until 31 December 2025. E-invoicing will then become mandatory from 1 January 2026.

It’s hoped that the introduction of this new invoice-reporting regime will help to prevent VAT fraud in the country by allowing the tax authorities to have more visibility of when VAT is charged and collected.