Compliant invoicing planned?

@david No, that would be incorrect (I discussed it extensively in the past weeks). The new law applies to the VAT rates only, not to the paperwork. A foreign seller doesn’t have to comply with Polish law regarding invoicing, neither technically, nor pragmatically. We (foreign sellers) do not send our invoices to the Polish Tax Bureau, we don’t talk to them, we don’t report to them and we do not have to find out what exchange rates have to be applied to each invoice (as explained in a previous message, each country has its own approved sources of rates, and more often than not, each country allows citizens to choose which one to use).

If you, from UK, produced an invoice in Euro for me, using your own choice of exchange rates, I would probably just shred it, as I might be allowed to use different rates, which could be more advantageous to me. At the end, I am the one who will show the invoice to my Revenue, and I will tell them how much I paid in Euro. ??

I don’t doubt that there might be someone who thinks that now we have to produce 28+ different types of invoices, but that is simply nonsense (whether, at the end, it’s part of the law or not). I’m more than ready to discuss this with any officer who might come knocking at the door (if ever).

@diego: This makes sense, thank you.

This all tends to confirm the idea that this more belongs in the territory of people producing invoicing plugins, rather than being a matter of EU VAT compliance. I think we’re all likely to still want invoices that comply with foreign regulations at some point, because otherwise buyers will want refunds and raise chargebacks. But that’s all in different territory to EU VAT compliance.

@david Personally, I strongly believe that buyers won’t file chargebacks because a merchant doesn’t produce documents in their language, using information approved by their government and exchange rates that look good to them.

For example, I had to deal with shops that did not send invoices at all (my own site also did not produce very “compliant” invoices at the beginning). None of them ever received a chargeback request because of that. When an invoice was required, the customer simply sent an email requesting for a formal document.

Bottom line: as long as the invoice contains all the information required to understand the nature of a purchase, everybody will be fine. ??

Hi

Maybe good news
https://www.vatlive.com/denmark-vat/denmark-exempt-foreign-e-services-suppliers-invoice-requirements/

Hoping that all countries have the same idea ??

Based on the above-quoted news, it seems that invoicing should be country-compliant, after all. We’ll see whether or not all the countries will exempt such invoice compliance in the future. So, Diego’s arguments (which seemed quite logical and reasonable to me) that every shop should follow its own country invoicing requirements seem to be wrong. If not, why Denmark would make such an exemption?

Yes, thr regulations state that every merchant has to observe each country’s regulations in terms of invoicing. My position on the topic has always been based on personal opinions and common sense, not on official documents.

To be more precise:
– the regulations say that we must observe every country’s rules, but it doesn’t describe them. It simply says to check with each country what such rules are.
– the above is nonsense, as merchants cannot be expected to deal with the revenue office in each and every country. The MOSS was put in place precisely to avoid it.
– due to all this, I see the regulations as “unenforceable”, or, at best, very hard to enforce. Of course, if you get an auditor who just goes by the book, he will still give you a fine.

In short: yes, we must produce 28 different types of invoices, and no, I don’t think it’s viable to do it, nor to check it. That doesn’t mean that it should not be done.

IMPORTANT
I’ve been trying to collect as much information as possible about invoicing regulations in the EU, in order to analyse how much work it would take to extend my own VAT compliance plugin. It’s still a work in progress, I don’t have any significant update yet.

I won’t discuss this topic any further on this forum, as it would be unfair to hijack attention from David’s plugin. I will move the topic to my own plugin’s forum.