Italian Parliament approved the compulsory introduction, with some exemptions, of the electronic business-to-business (B2B) invoicing, effective from January 1^st, 2019 (as already published in the article from Federico Rossi dated 12 September 2018).

If you have a subsidiary in Italy you need to select and introduce a solution to process e-invoices in accordance with the new regulations. The deadline is very near, so now it’s really necessary to proceed with the implementation, if you want to avoid any problems.

The key elements of the Italian Law are the following:

• all companies must issue, for domestic transactions, only electronic invoices starting from 1st January 2019
• all transactions, including inter-company, must be transmitted through the governmental platform SDI (Sistema di Interscambio), which is the platform currently used to transmit e-invoices to public bodies; this system will allow also the Italian Revenue Agency to automatically collect details of e-invoices sent to customers;
• only invoices which are generated in XML format will be recognized as valid tax documents, not only paper invoices, but neither PDF invoices will be allowed anymore starting from 1st January 2019.

This are the general requirements. The situation could become more complex if we consider also the intracommunity transactions, the import and export transactions, the self billing invoicing, etc.

Furthermore what can you do, if an invoice has been rejected by the SDI or if your company is not able to create invoices via the XML format on time?

Please consider, that all the questions are not evident yet, but our team is ready to assist you for all your questions in the field of international fiscal and tax law.