Spain’s steps towards e-invoicing

Spain’s approach to implementation: Law 18/2022 and draft royal decree

The move toward e-invoicing is central to the EU’s efforts to combat fraud, reduce transaction costs and facilitate transparency under the VAT in the Digital Age (ViDA) Regulation. Also read about our learnings from Italy, the pioneer of e-invoicing among EU member states, and Poland, which is set to roll out mandatory e-invoicing in 2026. 

On 20 June 2023, Spain joined the EU-wide change by publishing the draft royal decree to implement Law 18/2022, which extended the obligation to issue and send e-invoices to all companies (entrepreneurs) and professionals in their business relations. The draft royal decree is currently being reviewed by the Council of State. Once reviewed, it must be approved by the Council of Ministers and formally published in the Spanish Official State Gazette. The royal decree will come into force twelve months after publication.

Law 18/2022 outlines:

• technical and information requirements for Spain’s future e-invoicing system for companies and professionals
• the minimum interoperability requirements between providers of technological solutions for electronic invoicing
• security, control, and standardisation requirements for the devices and IT systems that generate documents.

Scope 

Entrepreneurs and professionals will be obliged to issue e-invoices for all business-to-business (B2B) transactions. However, this obligation will not apply to:

• simplified invoices (tickets)
• invoices issued voluntarily
• one party that does not have the headquarters of its economic activity, permanent establishment, or habitual residence in Spain. 

Nonetheless, e-invoices will have to be issued if both parties voluntarily agree to comply with the e-invoicing obligations through recipients or third parties. In these cases, the person obliged to issue the invoice will be responsible for complying with all the established obligations, regardless of the third party involved.

The e-invoicing requirement will apply one year after the finalised royal decree is published to companies and professionals with an annual turnover exceeding eight million euros. For the remaining companies and professionals, it will come into force two years after approval of the regulation. For the first 12 months after publication of the royal decree, companies that are obliged to issue e-invoices will have to supplement them with a PDF of the invoice. This will ensure readability for those that are not yet obligated to receive e-invoices, unless the recipient voluntarily and explicitly agrees to accept invoices in their original electronic format.

Spain’s e-invoicing system: private platforms and a public solution

The Spanish e-invoicing system will consist of private e-invoicing platforms that meet the requirements of the royal decree, and the public e-invoicing solution, which will be managed by the Spanish tax authorities (AEAT) and will serve as an invoice repository. E-invoicing may be carried out through the public e-invoicing solution, private e-invoicing platforms or a combination of both.

The public e-invoicing platform will serve as a cost-effective option, providing basic access for companies and professionals while also acting as a receptacle for information on invoices and their status, facilitating the monitoring of future invoice payment deadlines. The royal decree also specifies the methods of accessing the public system, the single syntax used for invoices, how the status of invoices is to be communicated and the interconnections between the public and private platforms.

Private platforms must ensure interoperability by converting invoices into all supported formats, interconnecting with other private e-invoicing platforms and accepting all interconnection requests. If permitted by the customer, they may also use the public e-invoicing solution for interconnection. Additionally, if e-invoices are exchanged exclusively through private e-invoicing platforms, an automatically generated copy of each e-invoice must be deposited in the public e-invoicing system in the Facturae syntax and signed by the issuer with an advanced electronic signature. 

Obligatory reporting of e-invoice statuses 

Recipients of e-invoices will be required to notify the issuer either of the commercial acceptance or rejection of the invoice including the date, and of the full payment of the invoice and its date. Additionally, they may report:

(i) partial commercial acceptance or rejection of the invoice and its date

(ii) partial payment of the invoice with the amount paid and its date, or 

(iii) the assignment of the invoice to a third party for collection or payment, including the assignee’s identity and the date of the assignment.

The information on the invoice statuses must be communicated within four calendar days, excluding weekends and national holidays. This reporting obligation will come into force three years after the publication of the royal decree for companies with an annual turnover exceeding six million euros, and four years for smaller companies. Until then, providing status information will remain voluntary.

Summary and outlook

With the requirements outlined in Law 18/2022 the Spanish authorities are taking a very similar approach to what we saw a few years ago with the Italian implementation of e-invoicing. With a central data exchange platform in the public e-invoicing platform, all invoices will need to be channelled through a government-run interface, giving the tax authorities first-hand access to relevant invoice data, which is a core driver for the European Commission’s ViDA (VAT in the Digital Age) initiative.

Yet the current draft law seems to be somewhat open regarding the actual data format to be exchanged and the technical data interface (except for the mandatory copy sent to the public e-invoicing platform). This differs from the more rigorous requirements that we saw with the KSeF system in Poland, for example.

All in all, the expected Spanish set-up, with its possibilities of private e-invoicing platforms, seems to be a good basis for allowing technological innovation to spring up on the Spanish market. But it remains to be seen whether the forced interoperability between platforms will actually lead to a broad market of solutions or whether the interoperability can only be confirmed in a small group of selected technologies.

The next months and years will show if the ongoing legislative process will address some of these weaknesses.