What are the key changes in Mexican e-invoicing?

Sovos
March 1, 2017

This blog was last updated on September 23, 2019

Mexico is one of the oldest pioneers in e-invoicing. With more than 10 years of experience, ~30 billion e-invoices, ~6 billion last year, it is worthwhile to see what the Tax Administration “SAT” has decided to change for the upcoming version 3.3, mandatory as of July 1st this year. As clearance gains more territory, what’s new in this clearance stronghold?

I’ll focus below on the key changes, but would be amiss if I didn’t briefly mention the good operational changes like: fixing flaws, standardized currency codes, catering with time-zones, richer printable representation, stronger signatures, and stricter contents control using several so called ‘catalogues’.

The first notorious key change is that suppliers will not be able to cancel certain CFDI invoices unless the buyer has agreed to that. This barrier was put by SAT to prevent fraud by suppliers who, once paid, cancelled CFDIs to avoid paying output VAT, creating a problem for buyers and the SAT alike.

Another change that we strongly advocated towards SAT is that the signing process includes ERP-generated invoice numbers. SAT didn’t see the need before as cleared invoices already contained another unique CFDI fiscal number assigned by the PAC. But this created problems for enterprises that issued different CFDIs, while SAT treated them as the same. This is another example where compliance and business processes are not at sync.

Finally, a payment ‘complemento’ (sort of appendix inside CFDI) also becomes mandatory. Suppliers will have to issue additional secondary CFDIs containing this ‘complemento’, each time they receive a payment for a transaction supported by a previously issued primary CFDI. In this way, the SAT will have better control of the corresponding tax. Also, as mentioned earlier, a buyer who has (partially) paid for a supply will be able to block any attempt to cancel the primary CFDI.

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Author

Sovos

Sovos is a global provider of tax, compliance and trust solutions and services that enable businesses to navigate an increasingly regulated world with true confidence. Purpose-built for always-on compliance capabilities, our scalable IT-driven solutions meet the demands of an evolving and complex global regulatory landscape. Sovos’ cloud-based software platform provides an unparalleled level of integration with business applications and government compliance processes. More than 100,000 customers in 100+ countries – including half the Fortune 500 – trust Sovos for their compliance needs. Sovos annually processes more than three billion transactions across 19,000 global tax jurisdictions. Bolstered by a robust partner program more than 400 strong, Sovos brings to bear an unrivaled global network for companies across industries and geographies. Founded in 1979, Sovos has operations across the Americas and Europe, and is owned by Hg and TA Associates.
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