VAT and E-Invoicing Public Consultation - Revenue

DRedSky

I'm looking for opinions and guidance here please, as I realise nobody can give an exact answer.

Recently I received an email from revenue about public VAT and E-Invoicing consultation. It's the E-Invoicing part that's extremely relevant to me.

I am self-employed and we're a tiny little printing company and 50% of what we print is Invoice books. So we're very heavily reliant on them. So when I received the email from Revenue and spotted that they mentioned garnering opinions on making E-Invoicing mandatory it obviously set some alarm bells ringing for me/us.

So my wondering is this, are we definitely looking at E-Invoicing becoming mandatory between even small businesses in Ireland, such as say an electrician and a carpenter who usually get 10 invoice books to last them a year, will it become mandatory even at that level thus making invoice books obsolete?

And if so, what's the likely timeframe? I did some googling and it seems certain countries had set targets but then they got postponed etc and likewise the EU had targets but they were for cross-nation trading rather than within one country. So it's all a bit unclear.

Can anyone please shed any light on whether we're looking at this as a certainty and will it definitely affect even the smallest of businesses here and opinions on a timeline?

It's very important to me as I need to plan ahead but from the email it seems just like they're getting opinions, whereas when I google it about the EU in general it seems a formality so I'm a bit unsure and would appreciate others opinions, please and thanks.

Gloomtastic!

All I'm seeing is that it's compulsory for Public Bodies. Nothing about the private sector.

DRedSky

This is what I’m referring to here, it says business to business so is it not private sector too?

https://www.irishtimes.com/business/2023/10/13/revenue-launches-public-consultation-to-modernise-vat-reporting/

Tow

Write into them with your opinions about how it effects you and your customers businesses. You just need to expand you OP a little bit, add more about your non tech savvy small trades men. From my own experience I suspect a fair few i have delt with are semi illiterate. You will get a scribble on a bit of paper from them at best. Do you print invoices listing jobs which get ticked eg cut grass, trim heage etc? Revenue them selves have a list of people who have dispensation from using a computer for doing their tax returns.

Just to add, the reason to write in is to make your case for you and the small tradesperson. It will probably get published and you may get invited to a in-person discussion group.