Current status of e-Invoicing

This draft, without prejudice to any possible changes that may be made until its definitive approval, will develop the obligatory nature of e-invoicing between companies in the professions of the “Crea y Crece” Law, whose objectives are the modernisation of society and the control of delinquency in commercial operations.

The main features of this draft are set out below:

The Spanish e-invoicing system

Mandatory e-invoicing between companies and professionals will be substantiated through the Spanish e-invoicing system, which will be made up of the set of private e-invoice exchange platforms that meet the requirements established in the Royal Decree, and by the public e-invoicing solution (SPFE), which will also act as an invoice repository, and which will be managed by the State Tax Administration Agency.

Permitted e-invoice formats

For this purpose, an e-invoice shall be understood as a structured computer message, in accordance with the semantic data model EN16931 of the European Committee for Standardisation and under one of the following syntaxes:

• UN/CEFACT XML Invoice message applicable to the whole industry as specified in the XML 16B (SCRDM - CII) schemas.
• Invoice and credit note UBL messages as defined in ISO/IEC 19845:2015.
• EDIFACT invoice message in accordance with ISO 9735.
• FacturaE message, in the version for invoicing between companies and professionals in force at any given time.

Interoperability of formats and interconnection between platforms

Regardless of the syntax used to exchange the e-invoice through private e-invoice exchange platforms, invoice issuers are obliged to send a copy of the invoice to the public e-invoicing solution, containing at least the mandatory contents of the invoice listed in the Invoicing Regulation.

E-invoice statuses

Recipients of e-invoices must inform the party responsible for issuing the invoice of the following invoice statuses:

• commercial acceptance or rejection of the invoice and its date.
• full actual payment of the invoice and its date.

In addition, the following statuses can be reported:

• acceptance or partial commercial rejection of the invoice and its date.
• partial payment of the invoice, amount paid and its date,
• assignment of the invoice to a third party for collection or payment, with identification of the assignee and the date of assignment.

Invoice status information shall be sent within a maximum of 4 calendar days, excluding Saturdays, Sundays and Bank holidays, from the date of the status reported in each case.

However, these obligations shall not apply to the invoice statuses and the way they are communicated to the public e-invoicing solution.

Public e-invoicing solution

E-invoicing may be carried out through private e-invoicing platforms, through the public e-invoicing solution or through a combination of both. Without prejudice to the syntaxes admissible in the Spanish e-invoicing system, companies and professionals using the public e-invoicing solution must use the FacturaE syntax.

The State Tax Administration Agency shall have the means to enable the individual and mass downloading of invoices, manually and automatically, for issuers, invoice recipients and their representatives and authorised parties. The downloading of invoices shall include both those issued and those received, and shall refer both to invoices issued directly through the public e-invoicing solution, and to those copies sent in compliance with the provisions of the Royal Decree.

Requirements for operating as an e-invoice exchange platform

Private e-invoice exchange platforms that form part of the Spanish e-invoicing system must have the proven capacity to connect to the public e-invoicing solution and, in addition, meet the requirements set out in the Royal Decree.

Relationship with other projects or reporting obligations (SII - Veri*factu)

It should be noted that the main objectives of the project for mandatory e-invoicing between companies and professionals are the modernisation of society through its digitalisation, and the fight against delinquency in commercial operations, which are different objectives to the obligations regarding the Immediate Supply of Information, the Veri*factu project, or the obligations imposed in relation to the requirements to be adopted by the computer or electronic systems and programmes that support the invoicing processes of companies and professionals. In addition, the project for mandatory e-invoicing between companies and professionals has a different state scope.

Consequently, the e-invoicing obligation between companies and professionals will coexist with the rest of the reporting obligations, such as the Immediate Supply of Information, without prejudice to the sharing of common elements (for example, univocal invoice identification and semantic elements), and new elements of convergence in the future, for which the necessary regulatory modifications will be required.

Entry into force

The Royal Decree will enter into force 12 months after its publication in the Official State Gazette.

During the first 12 months following the entry into force of the Royal Decree, companies that are obliged to issue e-invoices in their transactions with companies and professionals must accompany these e-invoices with a document in PDF format that ensures their readability for companies and professionals for whom the obligation to receive e-invoices has not yet come into force, except when the recipient of the e-invoices voluntarily and expressly accepts to receive them in their original format.

The provisions in relation to the obligation to provide information on invoice statements shall apply to companies whose annual turnover is less than 6,010,121.04 Euros, 36 months after the publication of the Royal Decree in the Official State Gazette, and to professionals whose annual turnover is less than 6,010,121.04 Euros, 48 months after the publication of the Royal Decree in the Official State Gazette. Until these deadlines have elapsed, the provision of information on invoice statements will be voluntary.

The entry into force of this Royal Decree is subject to obtaining the Community derogation from Articles 218 and 232 of Council Directive 2006/112/EC of 28 November on the common value added tax system.

Penalty regime

A specific sanction is envisaged in Article 2.bis of Law 56/2007, of 28 December, on Measures to Promote the Information Society (following its amendment by the “Crea y Crece” Law). According to this provision, companies that are obliged to do so but do not offer users the possibility of receiving e-invoices or do not allow access to their invoices by persons who are no longer customers shall be sanctioned with a warning or a fine of up to 10,000 Euros. The sanction shall be determined and graduated in accordance with the criteria established in article 19.2 of Law 6/2020, of 11 November, regulating certain aspects of electronic trust services.

Apart from this specific sanction, however, we must not forget the general sanction contemplated in the tax sphere in article 201 of the General Tax Law, relating to the tax offence of failing to comply with invoicing or documentation obligations. By virtue of this provision, when the requirements of the regulations governing the invoicing obligation are not met, a proportional fine of one percent of the total amount of the transactions giving rise to the infringement will be imposed, or two percent when the infringement consists of the failure to issue or keep invoices. When it is not possible to know the amount of the transactions to which the infringement refers, the penalty shall be 300 Euros for each transaction for which the corresponding invoice or document has not been issued or kept.

In addition to the above, and no less important, it should also be borne in mind that, according to Article 97 of the VAT Act, the right to deduct may only be exercised by companies or professionals who are in possession of the document justifying their right. For these purposes, only the following documents shall be considered as supporting documents for the right to deduct: 1. The original invoice issued by the person making the supply or providing the service or, in their name and on their behalf, by their customer or by a third party, provided that, in any of these cases, the requirements established by regulation are met. Thus, with regard to invoices received, the Tax Agency could, by virtue of this provision, deny the right to deduct all input VAT that is not documented in an e-invoice, when this is mandatory.