Spain: Electronic invoicing – draft regulation

published on 10 July 2023 | Reading time approx. 4 minutes

On June 15, 2023, the Draft of the Draft regulation that develops the Spanish Law "Crea y Crece" regarding to electronic invoicing between Companies and professionals was published. This Draft brings us a little closer to knowing the future Regulation that will make it compulsory to issue and send electronic invoices to all commercial relations between companies and professionals. The aim is to improve the traceability of the invoicing cycle between B2B operations, by providing exact information on the timeframes for issuing, delivery, acceptance and payment of the same invoice. The most important concepts of the Draft are the following:

Subjective scope »
Exceptions to the electronic invoicing obligation »
New system composition »
Electronic invoicing formats »
Obligations for electronic invoice recipients »
Entry into force »

Subjective scope

Companies and professionals who are obliged to issue and deliver invoices for transactions carried out in the course of their activities. The duty is excluded when one of the two parties to the transaction doesn't have in the territory of application of the tax (Spanish VAT territory):

its place of business, or
a Permanent Establishment to which the invoicing is addressed, or in its absence,
the place of its domicile or habitual residence.

Exceptions to the electronic invoicing obligation

Simplified invoices, except qualifies invoices, those in which the recipient is a Company or professional and so requires.
Those issued voluntarily when there is no obligation to do so.

Invoices must be issued in electronic format when the parties to the transaction have chosen to comply with the invoicing obligation through the recipients of the transaction or through third parties.

New system composition

There will be two types of e-invoice Exchange platforms to opt for:

Qualifying private platforms, and
Public platform to be managed by the State Tax Agency.

It´s understood that the public platform is chosen if the use of a private platform has not been expressly opted for.

All issuers of electronic invoices using private platforms will be obliged to send a true copy of each invoice in Facturae syntax to the public platform.

In addition, all Companies obliged to use this invoicing system will have to publish their point of entry for electronic invoices in all their communications with other companies and professionals and, if applicable, on their website.

Electronic invoicing formats

The electronic invoice shall be that computer message of a structured nature that has one of the following syntaxes:

UN/CEFACT XML message of the invoice applicable to the whole industry.
Invoice and credit note UBL messages (ISO/IEC 19845:2015 standard).
Invoice EDIFACT message according to ISO 9735 Standard
Facturae message

All electronic invoices issued through private platforms must be signed with an electronic signature by the issuer.

All electronic invoices must be identified with a unique code that must contain the issuer's VAT number, invoice number and series and date of issue.

Obligations for electronic invoice recipients

They shall inform the issuer of the following invoice statuses:

Commercial acceptance or rejection and date
Complete payment and date

Additionally, they will be able to report on:

Commercial partial acceptance or rejection and date
Partial payment, amount and date
Assignment of the invoice to a third party for its collection or payment.

The deadline for reporting this status shall be a maximum of 4 calendar days from the date of the statement being reported in each case (except Saturdays, Sundays and national holidays).

This information obligation does not apply when the public solution is used, which will have the following particularities:

When both issuer and receiver use this system, the invoicing process will be completed when the receiver downloads the invoice.
It will be understood that there is a commercial rejection when the invoice is issued and sent within the regulatory deadlines established, indicating it.
Regarding the information on the effective payment and date, the term to inform of the same will be a maximum of 4 days for the companies under the SII system, and for the rest of the cases it is still to be determined.

Entry into force

Once the Royal Decree is published in the State Official Gazette (“BOE”), the term will be 12 months from publication (24 months for companies with an annual turnover of less than 8 million euros).

In addition, during the first 12 months after its entry into force, the obliged Companies will have to accompany the electronic invoices with a PDF document for those other Companies and professionals for which the obligation has not yet entered into force.

The obligation to report invoice status will be applied within these deadlines:

Entrepreneurs with invoicing of less than 6,010,121.04 euros: 36 months after the publication in the BOE of the Royal Decree, and, to
Entrepreneurs with invoicing over 6,010,121.04 euros: after 48 months.

We will provide information on the final regulation of this Royal Decree as soon as it is published in the Official State Gazette (“BOE”).