Article 153 of the Finance Act for 2020 introduces the principle of the obligation to issue electronic invoices and to transmit the data contained therein to the administration for “Business to Business” transactions. These obligations are intended to make it possible to combat VAT fraud more effectively by allowing the tax authorities to carry out automatic cross-checks.
The implementation of these obligations is foreseen at the earliest by January 1st, 2023 and at the latest by January 1st, 2025, depending on the sector of activity and the size of the businesses concerned.
The scope of these measures should cover domestic transactions invoiced under the vendor’s French VAT number, but this still needs to be clarified.
In order to ensure the proper functioning of the future system, the tax administration has initiated consultations with the concerned parties gathered within a pilot group (businesses, professional organisations, lawyers, software publishers). On this occasion, all questions and remarks were raised in order to anticipate all legal, technical and operational constraints as well as potential risks.
At the same time, a software experiment (Chorus pro, which does exist for “Business to Government” relations) is underway on “Business to Business” flows. This experimentation aims to test the dematerialized emission and reception of invoices and will lead to the preparation of a report to be presented to Parliament in September 2020.
Nathalie Habibou, Partner, Arsene
