More than 80 countries worldwide have made e-invoicing mandatory and a further 50 have announced plans to introduce new or additional regulations. It is expected that by 2030, most of the world’s 200 VAT systems will introduce mandatory continuous transaction controls related to invoicing.

Europe / EU
Digitalization in the EU is to be driven forward. This also applies to VAT in order to reduce opportunities for fraud, among other things. To this end, the EU Commission has launched the ViDA (VAT in the Digital Age) initiative with various measures. These include the introduction of mandatory electronic invoicing and a central reporting system in the member states. Some countries, such as Italy (FatturaPA) and Turkey (e-Fatura, e-Arşiv), already have mature mandates for electronic invoicing. Other countries, such as France (Facture-X), Spain (Facturae), Belgium (PEPOL BIS Billing) and Poland (Faktura KSeF) are in the process of introducing such mandates.

Germany
Until now, companies have had the choice of the format (e.g. paper, PDF, XML, EDI) in which they issue their invoices. Exception: In the public sector (B2G), XRechnung has been mandatory for several years. This is a special XML format that is specified centrally by KoSIT.

From January 1, 2025, companies are generally obliged to issue invoices electronically in the B2B area in accordance with the Growth Opportunities Act (for details, see Section 14 of the Value Added Tax Act). If an electronic invoice is sent, the recipient is generally obliged to process it. An electronic invoice (Section 14 (1) sentence 3 of the new version of the German VAT Act) is an invoice that is issued, transmitted and received in a structured electronic format to enable electronic processing. The structured electronic format must comply with the European standard for electronic invoicing and the list of corresponding syntaxes in accordance with Directive 2014/55/EU (and therefore the CEN standard EN 16931). This means that the classic paper invoice and the popular simple PDF invoice via email are no longer permitted.

The tax authorities have already clarified (BMF letter dated 2.10.2023) that the XRechnung and ZUGFeRD formats from version 2.0.1 (a PDF document with embedded XML file) meet the new requirements. There are no regulations for the transmission channel of an e-invoice (e.g. email, De-Mail, business network or portal). Further details including transition periods and exceptions can be found here.