Hungarian online invoice data reporting obligation is set to be extended practically to all invoices by 2021 in two steps. Companies – for some as a totally new requirement – should be ready to allocate development capacity in order to comply with the reporting on time.
Online invoice data reporting was introduced in Hungary in 2018 to combat VAT fraud and to facilitate digitalization of VAT reporting. The reporting obligation requires taxpayers to provide data to the tax authority electronically in a pre-defined format. Up until now, the scope of live invoice reporting was limited to business to business (B2B) transactions with VAT charged over HUF 100,000.
The Hungarian Parliament passed a legislation in December 2019 that amended the VAT Act in two steps. As of 1 July 2020 the threshold for live invoice data reporting will be abolished (i.e. brought down to zero). This implies that taxpayers should consider all of their B2B invoices regardless of VAT amount, including transactions subject to reverse charge or VAT exemption. As the second step, from 1 January 2021 the reporting will be further extended to business to customer (B2C) transactions as well.
For development purposes, as of 1 April 2020 reporting should be performed via the ‘2.0 schema’ only. Specification and test environment for the new reporting interface is already available on the website of the tax authority, production environment is also expected to be deployed by mid-February 2020.
The tax authority already indicated that they are also working on their next tool against VAT fraud, i.e. the standard audit file (SAF-T). SAF-T (already introduced in some EU countries e.g. in France, Poland, Austria) requires a wider range of data to be provided in a standardized format. This requirement is still under development and early consultations have just yet started.
By Balint Zsoldos, Head of Tax, KCG Partners Law Firm
