The French E-invoicing Mandate: Your Questions Answered

In our recent webinar, Sovos covered the new French e-invoicing and e-reporting mandate, and what this means for businesses and their tax obligations.

We are witnessing a global move towards Continuous Transaction Controls (CTCs), where tax authorities are demanding transactional data in real-time or near real-time, affecting e-invoicing and e-reporting obligations.

As such, from 2023, France will implement a mandatory B2B e-invoicing clearance and e-reporting obligation in an effort to increase tax efficiency, cut costs, and fight fraud.

The pace towards this mandate has been accelerating lately with the adoption of the Finance law for 2021, followed by a number of workshops organised by the Ministry of Finance — namely the Direction Générale des Finances Publiques (DGFIP).

In the first of two blogs on the mandate, we answer some of your most pressing questions asked during our webinar.

In part one, we focus on setting the scene in terms of scope, and cover questions around e-invoicing specifically, invoicing file formats, processes and controls, and archiving.

The second blog covers questions around e-reporting obligations.

Scope of the regulation

In this section, we answer questions on the scope of the regulation, such as which companies must comply with the mandate and how.

Are non-resident companies (foreign companies with only a French VAT-registration) obliged to fulfil this new regulation? Are foreign legal entities with a French VAT number in scope?

The Budget Laws for 2020 and 2021 introduced the CTC scheme from a legal perspective. Both include “persons subject to VAT” in the scope.

VAT registration is a strong indication that a company is subject to VAT, but classification as a VAT “taxable person” also depends on other factors.

Therefore, it is not as simple as just looking at whether a company has a local VAT registration, to decide whether it is subject to VAT and therefore targeted by the mentioned budget laws.

However, the scope cannot be unilaterally decided by France as the French CTC scheme is dependent on a derogation from the EU Council.

As a comparison, Italy initially included all taxable persons in the scope of its e-invoicing clearance mandate, including those with a mere VAT registration but no establishment. But in this case, the EU Council limited the scope (of its derogation) to persons established in Italy.

From an e-invoicing perspective, we can therefore expect that France will need to follow the Italian path (due to its reliance on a derogation from the EU Council), limiting the scope to established persons.

DGFIP has however suggested that companies that are non-established but VAT registered will be in scope of the reporting obligation.

Is import of goods in the scope of e-reporting? What about import of services?

Only imports (supplies from outside of the EU) of services are in the scope of the current proposal.

E-invoice formats

In this section, we discuss permitted e-invoice formats.

The fact that the new regime creates a specific process for domestic B2B e-invoicing does not change the need for businesses to demonstrate the integrity and authenticity of each invoice.

This can be done through one of the 3 legal methods defined by the existing regulations:

• EDI
• Qualified electronic signature or seal
• The Business Controls option using Audit trail

To ensure there’s no impact of the reform on integrity and authenticity demonstration methods, one can still apply any of them.

However, with the new regime, e-invoicing data sent to the DGFIP does need to be in a structured format.

Will digital signatures be required?

Digital signatures are not strictly required today and will not be strictly required in the new scheme. Integrity and authenticity will still need to be ensured though, irrespective of invoice format, as is the case today.

The options remain the same; use of digital signatures, use of EDI with security measures, or the BCAT option whereby the audit trail should prove the transaction and its authenticity and integrity.

Are PDF and XML invoice file formats still possible to receive from 2023-2025?

The legal invoice format can be anything, as long as the supplier and buyer agree on it and the integrity and authenticity are guaranteed. Also, a human readable version (normally a PDF) is required upon audit as part of the general EU requirements.

What e-invoicing formats are permitted?

This is not fully defined yet, but DGFIP has indicated the following syntax, based on the EN16931 standard:

• Structured format: UBL invoice / CII D16B / XCBL
• Hybrid format: Minimum UBL invoice / CPP hybrid / FACTUR-X (PDF-A3) / Minimum CII

Those formats would apply to:

• Submission of invoicing data to Chorus Pro by suppliers who don’t go through a partner platform
• Issuing of legal invoice by Chorus Pro to buyers who don’t use a partner platform
• Reporting of clearance data (out of the legal e-invoice) to Chorus Pro by the supplier’s partner platform
• Exchange of legal invoices by the supplier and buyer partner platforms unless they agreed to some other format (NB: for this last case, partner platforms should be able to process those formats at a minimum level by default. But nothing would prevent them from deciding to use any other format if both the supplier and the buyer agree, e.g. EDIFACT).

E-invoicing process and controls

In this section, we answer questions around the processes for sending and receiving e-invoices, what information they need to include, and the Chorus Pro platform.

Will the e-invoice need to be sent real-time?

Yes, it can be considered a “real-time clearance system”. As part of the e-invoicing obligation, the reporting of mandatory data to the tax authorities and the issuance of the original invoice to the buyer by the supplier’s partner platform should happen right after receiving the invoicing data from the supplier.

If the invoice doesn’t have all the mandatory information like the SIRET number of a customer, will the Chorus Pro platform clear it?

• It will be mandatory to mention the SIRET number (ID) of the French trading parties.
• For non-French EU parties, the VAT intracom number will need to be mentioned.
• For non-EU parties, some local ID will be expected.
• If the applicable ID is missing, the data will be rejected by Chorus.
• If the ID is wrong, the invoice will be addressed to the wrong buyer and will eventually have to be cancelled (if e-invoicing) or may be penalised by tax authorities if audited.

Will Chorus Pro also be validating the VAT rates used?

No, or at least not on the fly when submitting the invoicing data to Chorus Pro. Our understanding is that those verifications will be done by the tax authorities after the fact, using data analytics / AI algorithms.

Are there common data, connection and bridges with the current SAF-T?

The French version of SAF-T (FEC) must still be available on demand from the tax authorities.

Archiving

In this section, we answer questions around compliant archiving of e-invoices.

Does the Chorus Pro/Tax Authority portal provide a compliant electronic archive for AP/AR invoices in France?

Yes. However, in our experience, even though a tax authority’s archiving solution would be available for taxable persons, few larger companies choose to solely rely on it for evidence purposes and instead continue to use their compliant internal or third-party archiving solutions.

This decision is ultimately based on the fact that the tax authority’s archiving solution poses a conflict of interest: it is maintained by the tax authority, which, from a legal perspective, is not an independent party but rather the counterparty in a fiscal claim.

In fact, from discussions with many experts and customers over that past year, we see that the market request for third-party archiving services is even stronger after the introduction of clearance, especially as customers see a need to store not only the invoice but also response messages from the CTC portal to further maintain evidence of compliance.