Italy - 2019 eInvoicing Country Sheet

Legislation

The use of eInvoices in public procurement in Italy is mandatory for ministries, tax agencies and national security agencies since June 2014. Since 31 March 2015, it is mandatory for all public entities. The use of eInvoices is based on the following legal instruments:

• Italian law number 244 of 24 December 2007, provisions for drafting the annual and longer term financial statements of the State (Finance Act 2008);
• Decree of 7 March 2008, identification of the Provider of the Exchange System for electronic invoicing and the relative attributions and duties;
• Decree of 3 April 2013, regulation on the issue, transmission and receipt of electronic invoices to be applied to public authorities;
• Decree law of 24 April 2014, n. 66. Urgent measures for the competitiveness and the social justice (art 25).
• Circular of the State General Accounting Office number 37 of 4 November 2013, First Operating Instructions for the implementation of the Regulation on the issue, transmission and receipt of electronic invoices to be applied to public administrations.
• Legislative decree n. 148/2018, Transposition of Directive 2014/55/EU.
• Provvedimento 18 aprile 2019 - Core Invoice Usage Specification

eInvoicing platform and eInvoicing management solutions

The Italian state offers the exchange system (Sistema di Interscambio) for eInvoicing processing. This system should process eInvoices before they can be transmitted to the public entities. There are multiple ways to submit an eInvoice to the government administrations through the Exchange system. These include:

• Certified Electronic Mail (CEM);
• the web – through the Revenue Agency Website (authentication required);
• SDICoop - Web Service;
• SDIFTP  - File Transfer Protocol;

The different methods for submitting eInvoices have specific requirements, regarding the means of connecting to the eInvoicing platform and the eInvoice’s file size. Most economic operators use the solutions offered by major companies such as ‘Poste italiane’. 

Approach for receiving and processing eInvoices

The Italian operating model for eInvoicing follows a single exchange hub named Sistema di Interscambio with which senders and receivers of electronic invoices can be supported by their own service provider. The Revenue Agency manages the Sistema di Interscambio with technology and operational support from Sogei, an IT provider owned by the Italian Ministry of Economy and Finance.

Economic operators submit eInvoices following the FatturaPA format through the Sistema di Interscambio. The Sistema di Interscambio works as an eDelivery service, transmitting each eInvoice to the addressed administration based on an addressee identifier (Unique Office Code). Only formal controls are performed by the Sistema di Interscambio. Economic operators and public entities may make use of a solution provider for submitting/receiving invoices and control messages to/from the Sistema di Interscambio.

All the invoices are sent by the Sistema di Interscambio to the State General Accounting Department, responsible for performing audit functions on the financial administration of public institutions through inspection activities, for monitoring of public expenditure.

Each public administration chose the way they want to receive the invoices from the Sistema di Interscambio through one of the following means:

• Certified Electronic Mail (CEM);
• the SDICoop – Reception Service;
• the SDIFTP Service;
• the SPCoop - Reception Service.

Once received, the processing of eInvoices by contracting authorities is undertaken through an automation and integration process, which is normally proportional and varies according to the dimension of the contracting authority. The invoices are then archived digitally for ten years by the public administrations receiving the eInvoice. The Sistema di Interscambio does not archive invoices.

The Revenue Agency has put in place free services to support SMEs onboarding and facilitate the transmission and archiving of eInvoices. The Revenue Agency developed an APP for smartphones to allow SMEs to create and transmit eInvoices. They have further created videos to show how easy is to implement eInvoicing.

Status on the implementation of the European Standard on eInvoicing (EN)

From a legislative point of view, the Directive 2014/55/EU was transposed by the Legislative decree n. 148/2018. The Legislative decree n. 148/2018 mandates the e-invoices to be compliant with the Italian CIUS.

EN compliant eInvoices will be accepted for contracts below the EU threshold, too.

The Italian government developed the B2G eInvoicing infrastructure (Sistema di Interscambio) to make it compliant with Directive 2014/55/EU with the support of the eIGOR and EeISI projects, co-financed by the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) programme. Under the eIGOR project, translators have been developed for EN compliant eInvoices syntaxes to/from the FatturaPA syntax.

When a EN compliant invoice is received, The Sistema di Interscambio translates it to the FatturaPA syntax and forwards it, together with the translated eInvoice and a translation report, to the public administration. The public administration can choose to process either the translated invoice in the FatturaPA syntax, for which they are equipped since 2015, or the original EN compliant eInvoice.

Use of Core Invoicing Usage Specifications (CIUS) at national level 

The use of the Italian CIUS is mandatory.

Additional information

As of January 1, 2019, eInvoicing is mandatory for B2B and B2C among Italian operators with annual turnover greater then € 65,000. The invoices must be in the FatturaPA format, and are transmitted via the Sistema di interscambio. EN compliant eInvoices may be accepted for domestic B2B  invoicing as a further development.

During the first 6 months of mandatory B2B eInvoicing, the Sistema di interscambio has correctly processed over 1 billion eInvoices (17 million for the B2G). The mandatory  eInvoicing is helping achieve important goals in tackling VAT evasion and simplification of administrative and fiscal processes, and boosted the growth of the market of services.

The biggest challenge for Italy is to make stakeholders understand that implementing eInvoicing is not only a legal obligation but also an opportunity that will be beneficial to all transaction parties.

Last updated:  Dec 20, 2019 17:19