This blog was last updated on May 28, 2026

Mandatory e-invoicing is often presented as a recent reform, driven in Europe by the ViDA — VAT in the Digital Age — project and by the national mandates now being rolled out. Yet this transformation did not begin in Brussels or Paris.

This was the starting point chosen by Christiaan Van der Valk during his opening keynote at the E-invoicing Days, held on May 6, 2026, at the Palais Brongniart: to understand ViDA, Europe must first be placed within a much longer story, one that began in Latin America in the early 2000s. The idea of mandatory e-invoicing emerged in Chile in 2001, before spreading within fifteen years across much of Latin America and then reaching Turkey from 2014 onward.

Mandatory e-invoicing is therefore not merely a change in document format. It marks the entry of tax administrations into a new phase of digitalization, in which transaction data becomes a central tool of tax control. The paradox is striking: administrations long perceived as conservative have, within a few decades, become one of the driving forces behind the digital transformation of economies.

Europe is therefore entering a movement that is already well under way elsewhere. But it is not entering it with a single model. This is one of the key messages of this historical perspective: everywhere, States are moving toward tax digitalization, but no two countries are doing it in exactly the same way. 

From Latin America to Europe: a transformation first driven by tax administrations

Latin America occupies a foundational place in this story. It was there, from the early 2000s onward, that a highly advanced tax control logic emerged, centered on the relationship between the taxpayer and the administration. The principle is clearance: before the commercial process can continue, the invoice must be approved by the tax administration. In this model, the State intervenes very early in the invoicing cycle. It no longer merely audits returns after the fact: it receives, verifies and authorizes the data linked to the transaction.

This architecture is highly sophisticated from a tax standpoint, but it does not necessarily transform the entire commercial relationship between companies. In many Latin American countries, the exchange of invoices between trading partners remains lightly regulated and is still often carried out by email. In other words, the tax administration is deeply digitalized, but automation of intercompany processes does not always move at the same pace.

Europe followed a different path. When the first Member States introduced mandatory e-invoicing, they did not simply replicate the Latin American model. Some countries instead chose even more centralized architectures, with a State platform playing a mandatory role in the circulation of invoices. Italy, followed by Turkey, Poland and Romania, illustrates this family of highly centralized models.

At the same time, another model developed in Northern Europe: the four-corner Peppol model. Unlike centralized schemes, it is based on a decentralized architecture organized around interoperable access points. This coexistence between highly centralized and highly decentralized models partly explains Europe’s current complexity.

France, for its part, is preparing to introduce a five-corner model. This can be understood as a form of balance between these two logics: a decentralized model, favorable to innovation and data security, while also organizing the transmission of information to the tax administration through access points.

This overview shows that the digital transformation of taxation is not linear. It does not follow a single model that would mechanically spread from one country to another. It advances instead through successive adaptations, shaped by political choices, existing infrastructure and the specific objectives of each administration.

One direction, but a wide diversity of models

This diversity is one of the major lessons of the keynote. There are virtually no two identical national regimes. Tax digitalization models combine many dimensions: mandatory e-invoicing, continuous controls, periodic controls, accounting records files, data exchanges with the administration, centralized or decentralized architectures. For international companies, this heterogeneity radically changes how they should approach the issue. They cannot simply prepare for “e-invoicing” as if it were a uniform global standard. They must deal with a mosaic of regimes, formats, obligations and transmission channels.

Brazil illustrates the level of sophistication reached by some countries. Tax auditors there can use tools capable of visualizing invoice flows and transport documents around a company in real time. In this representation, signals can highlight problematic partners or data, allowing the administration to intervene very quickly. This example shows what “continuous transaction controls” means in concrete terms. It is not just about sending electronic files. It is about giving the administration a new ability to read, compare and act on economic flows.

Another major development is prefilled returns. They appear as one of the possible consequences of these reforms, including beyond VAT in some countries. Here again, the issue is not only technical. The shift toward returns prepared from data already received by the administration profoundly changes the historical logic of self-reporting.

Even when countries move in the same direction, they do not choose the same balances between tax control, exchange automation, centralization, interoperability and the freedom left to economic actors. This is precisely what makes European harmonization both necessary and difficult. 

ViDA: Europe’s tipping point

It is within this global context that ViDA fits. The project should be understood as a package to modernize the European VAT directives. It has several pillars, but the one directly related to e-invoicing and reporting is the Digital Reporting Requirements, or DRR.

These DRR follow the same logic as continuous transaction controls, known as CTC. Put simply, ViDA marks the moment when Europe joins, belatedly, a movement that has long been underway elsewhere: the generalization of mandatory e-invoicing and real-time reporting.

The key deadline is 2030. By then, e-invoicing must become the norm for intra-Community flows, meaning transactions between a supplier established in one Member State and a buyer established in another. Member States will also have to implement the associated real-time reporting before transmitting the data to a European database.

But the European framework rests on a delicate political balance. The European Commission cannot directly impose mandatory e-invoicing for domestic flows. It therefore acts through other levers. On the one hand, Member States no longer need to request a derogation in order to impose e-invoicing at national level. On the other, several technical provisions in the text create a strong incentive to progressively align domestic flows with intra-Community flows. The example of paper invoices or PDFs is revealing: from 2030 onward, a Member State wishing to continue accepting them for VAT purposes will have to legislate specifically to that effect. This type of mechanism shows that ViDA does not directly constrain all domestic flows, but clearly pushes Member States toward a broader generalization of e-invoicing.

The situation of countries already equipped with e-invoicing systems adds another layer of complexity. Some Member States already have e-invoicing or reporting systems, sometimes centralized, that will need to be adapted to comply with ViDA. Timelines will therefore differ by country, with some having more time to evolve their systems. ViDA therefore appears less as a starting point than as a moment of convergence. Europe is trying to build a common framework in a landscape already populated by different national models, while encouraging Member States to go beyond the intra-Community scope alone.

A world tour that underscores the diversity of trajectories

The international panorama confirms that tax digitalization does not follow a uniform trajectory. Latin America remains a pioneering region, where these systems have already been operating for many years. Brazil, in particular, continues to innovate according to its own logic, without necessarily seeking to align with European models.

In the United States, the situation is different. The absence of a federal VAT does not mean an absence of interest in e-invoicing. A nascent movement is developing around the four-corner model, more closely tied to payment digitalization than to taxation. In Asia, the four-corner Peppol model plays a particularly structuring role. Most Asian e-invoicing programs rely on this system, even though some countries, notably China, are following their own trajectory. Africa, finally, has a less well-known but very real history of e-invoicing, with some systems already in place for some time. Several countries, including Nigeria, are also showing growing interest in Peppol.

This world tour confirms the central message: tax digitalization is advancing everywhere, but it does not produce a single model. Each region, each State and each administration builds its own response according to its priorities and constraints.

Conclusion: ViDA, Europe’s entry into an already global transformation

ViDA is not an isolated reform, nor a European invention created from scratch. It is the moment when the European Union joins a global movement that began more than twenty years ago, first driven by pioneering tax administrations in Latin America.

But Europe’s entry into this movement does not settle everything. It takes place in a world where models are numerous, architectures differ and obligations are sometimes highly heterogeneous. The challenge will therefore not be only to impose e-invoicing, but to build convergence strong enough to simplify exchanges without ignoring the diversity of existing systems.

This may be the most important message: tax digitalization is advancing everywhere, but rarely in the same way. For companies, especially international ones, the question will therefore not only be how to comply with ViDA. It will be to understand how this European reform fits into a much broader global transformation, in which tax administrations are gradually becoming central players in the digitalization of economies.