Italy: New VAT compliance rules, e-invoicing extended to cross-border transactions effective January 2022

Electronic invoicing (e-invoicing rules) beginning 1 January 2022 will be extended to certain cross-border transactions conducted by entities established in Italy with non-Italian customers or suppliers.

The following transactions will be subject to the e-invoicing rules (and thus will need to be sent in xml format via the SDI (sistema di interscambio) portal managed by the Italian tax authority):

• Intra-EU acquisitions of goods
• Intra-EU supplies of goods
• Imports, if the related customs bills are not available
• Exports, if the related customs bills are not available
• Domestic acquisitions of goods from entities not established in Italy, subject to the reverse-charge mechanism
• Domestic sales of goods to entities not established in Italy
• Services rendered to entities not established in Italy
• Services purchased from entities not established in Italy

Under the new rules, Italian entities will have to report details of these transactions to the Italian tax authority under the same rules and processes currently in place for the mandatory e-invoicing between parties established in Italy. Therefore, these details will have to be provided via the SDI portal (the technical specifications for the current Esterometro system used to report these transactions will no longer apply).

The data transmission deadlines will be much tighter:

• Details of supplies to customers not established in Italy will have to be transmitted via the SDI portal within the relevant invoicing deadline (i.e., 12 days from the tax point for “immediate” invoices; the 15th day of the following month for deferred invoices).
• Details of purchases from non-established suppliers will have to be transmitted via the SDI portal by the 15th day of the month following that in which the invoice from the supplier has been received or in which the transaction has taken place. 

The Italian tax authority postponed to 1 January 2022 (from October 2021) the adoption of the new technical specifications for the transmission of daily payment details.

Still according to a September 2021 decree, the current “telematic register” must be updated by 31 December 2021.

The new technical specifications allow entities to manage certain transactions such as returned items, annulled transactions, the issuance and redemption of vouchers, and commercial documents linked to an invoice.

However, until 31 December 2021 it is possible to use the new technical specifications on an optional basis.

New guidance—"Guidelines on the formation, management and archiving of digital documents” (Linee Guida sulla formazione, gestione e conservazione dei documenti informatici)—will be effective as of 1 January 2022.

Beginning 1 January 2022, e-archiving managers need to consider conducting specific and periodical checks and set up specific procedures to determine compliance with the e-archiving system. If the manager does not have specific IT and tax knowledge needed to perform these tasks, companies may want to consider whether to assign these tasks to a third-party provider.

Read a November 2021 report [PDF 240 KB] prepared by the KPMG member firm in Italy