In December 2021 Saudi Arabia will make the electronic invoice mandatory for all in country tax payers. The implementation of the electronic invoicing system will begin on December 4th and the Zakat, Tax and Custom Authority (ZATCA) declared it will implement in two phases.
Phase 1. December 4th 2021.
Taxpayers will have to issue electronic invoices with a compatible system that allows the required fields to be represented in the electronic invoice. The system must also archive and generate an electronic copy to the client. Manual invoices will no longer be accepted
The mandatory fields that must be included in the electronic invoice in phase 1 are: VAT number of the buyer, if registered as a taxpayer mandated to invoice; the issuance date of the invoice and the VAT. Optionally issuers can add a QR code to B2B invoices but must include it on the simplified B2C invoices.
Phase 2. January 1st 2023.
This is known as the “integration phase”. After this date all invoicing systems must be compatible with the ZATCA system. The integration with the ZATCA’s system will be rolled out progressively based on the taxpayer class. ZATCA will inform taxpayers at least 6 months before their mandatory integration date.
During this phase the following requirements must be followed: all electronic invoices including tax invoices or simplified tax invoices and their associated documents must be generated in an XML or PDF/ A-3 (with XML) format.
Source Edicom
