HU TA Online invoices: 3+1 tasks for May

The new online invoice version deadline changed in the very last minute gives an opportunity for companies to review the tasks that, in our experience, all taxpayers issuing invoices covered by the reporting obligation should go through. 

1.Make sure that your invoicing program was successfully prepared for XSD version 1.1 

Our practical experience shows that organizations are not necessarily aware of the changes carried out in their invoicing programs, in which phase the process of going live currently is and whether the version change has been implemented or it will only take place in the future. As at the moment, data may be reported using both the previous 1.0 and the new 1.1 version, failed version changes are not revealed while nobody is still working on the change. We also came across this problem in the form that the technical team misunderstood the new online invoice data report requirements (due to their complex nature) and only prepared the invoicing programs for these partly. When in doubt, on the online invoice portal of HU TA, taxpayers may themselves check whether the data reporting module properly transmitted their invoices and the XSD version that was used for this purpose. 

2.Prepare for the change in June and be aware of the necessary steps

Companies must know who will have to do what to implement the XSD 1.1 version change and make sure that the responsible persons are aware of their tasks. Among other things, the tax authority expects in relation to the new XSD schema that if the quantity units can be expressed in natural quantities, they are treated accordingly during data reporting. For example, if the quantity unit is pieces, irrespective of the specification on the invoice (e.g.: "db"," darab", "pc") the specification "PIECE" expected by the tax authority must be used in XML in each case. From June, dates before 2010 may not be shown on invoices. For this reason, master data may have to be changed in ERP systems. 

3.Make sure that all your invoices issued so far covered by the reporting obligation have been received by the tax authority

From 1 July 2018, companies will have to report all invoices issued to domestic business partners if the amount of the relating VAT reaches or exceeds the value threshold of 100,000 forints. Our digital tax solutions team carried out reviews of the (hundreds or even thousands of) invoices concerned at several of our partners in the past few months and compared the data of these in the invoicing system to those submitted to the tax authority. This invoice report audit may be carried out automatically as taxpayers can search reported invoice data retroactively on the HU TA  online invoice portal and can compare these to the data in their invoicing systems and in the invoice images. 

+1 Correct and supplement the errors and deficiencies identified in online invoice data reporting

In our experience, minor or major differences and deficiencies occur regularly in online invoice data reporting. The tax authority's system gives a technological opportunity for taxpayers to subsequently correct or supplement these thereby eliminating the risk of later sanctions. However, from 4 June 2019, subsequent data reporting for previous periods may also only be fulfilled using the new XSD (1.1) version and not the former XSD 1.0 version. This means a further technical difficulty for those who will try to supplement correct invoice reports after the deadline. For this reason, these should already be completed in May. 

Keep in mind that failure to submit online invoice data reports may led to a penalty of up to half a million forints per invoice, which may imply a higher tax penalty risk than the VAT content of the invoice. Also, HU TA is already working on version 2.0 of the XSD planned to be introduced in 2020 and built on version 1.1, which means that compliance with this version must be ensured.