New electronic invoice decree

On 1 July 2015 NGM decree 23/2014 (VI. 30.) entered into force: the new decree regulates the tax-authority identification of invoices and receipts and the tax-authority checking of invoices preserved in electronic format. The ministry’s goal with the new decree is to guarantee that the tax authorities have access to such invoices in a standard format when they do an inspection. For instance the decree regulates, depending on the format used to preserve invoices electronically, e.g. xml or other electronic format, the data content and structure of such invoices. Changes from the old regulation mostly concern those businesses which use an xml format with data structure different from the one specified by the new decree. These tax payers need to update the IT system they use in order to be able to provide the authorities with invoices in the format they require as of 1 July 2015. István Veszprémi, a Deloitte tax and legal consulting partner told our magazine that the new, standardised format makes it possible for the tax authorities to get a wider picture of taxpayers’ activities, providing the technological background for automatically identifying tax payment-related mistakes at system level. As of 1 January 2016 invoicing software need to have a ‘data providing for tax-authority inspection purposes’ feature: a module that facilitates the exporting of data content of paper or electronic invoices according to date of issue or serial number – with the data content and structure specified by the new decree.