2025 Accounting Act e-invoicing legislation in consultation
Estonia’s Ministry of Finance has circulated in December 2023 its prospective Accounting Act Amendment Bill. This seeks to introduce optional mandatory e-invoicing from January 2025.
This would give resident B2B customers the option to insist on e-invoices from their suppliers. This would revising the definition of ‘machine-processable invoice’ or e-invoice to the EU’s EN 16931 structured e-invoice format. At present, businesses may use an Estonian standard or the EU’s. The Estonian Information Technology and Telecommunication Union has proposed moving to the EN 16931 single format for B2B transactions, too.
This means of encouraging e-invoicing adoption is already applied for Finland e-invoicing.
In Estonia, the Accounting Act regulates basic accounting functions for all registered business entities.
Estonia imposed e-invoicing for B2G transactions in March 2017. It applies either the Estonian UBL, UN/CEFACT CII or the European standard on e-invoicing. There is no central government platform for e-invoice exchange; instead, parties can exchange directly or via commercial intermediaries. Many parties use a Peppol network.
Economic operators must have an accounting software or ERP in place to generate e-invoices or can alternatively outsource the generation of e-invoices to different software providers.
Estonia’s plans may be revised in light of the EU’s own VAT in the Digital Age reforms. This includes a Digital Reporting Requirement pillar with intra-community e-invoicing reforms likely for 2030 or later.
