National System of Electronic Invoices – firstly voluntary, then obligatory
The Polish Ministry of Finance plans to introduce the National System of Electronic Invoices (in Polish – “Krajowy System eFaktur”, hereinafter: „KSeF”). During the first stage of the implementation, taxpayers may use KSEF on a voluntary basis from 1 January 2022 parallelly with traditional paper and electronic invoices. However, in 2023 KSeF is deemed to become obligatory for all the VAT taxpayers. Some of them should start internal works even now to be ready for the new obligations.
KSeF - what is it and how does it work?
KSeF is a system that enables the taxpayers to issue, receive, keep and share so called structured invoices via special environment prepared by the Ministry of Finance. In other words: it is a huge teleinformatic tool – after entering the invoice data to the system, it will then assign a unique identification number to the document and verify the compliance of the data in such an invoice with the structured invoice template. After that, the invoice will be sent to the recipient throughout the system itself.
For whom?
As a rule, KSeF is going to be used by the active taxpayers registered for VAT purposes in Poland, the taxpayers exempt from VAT and the taxpayers identified in Poland for the special EU OSS procedure holding a Polish NIP (tax identification number). Basically – all the entities which conduct business operations in Poland.
Implications of KSeF
It is not an exaggeration to call KSeF another revolution in the field of VAT reporting. It requires significant workload of internal works from the taxpayer, as:
- the format of invoice will be different than now (all the invoices will be sent to KSeF and the customer in .xml),
- the internal procedures should be adjusted accordingly,
- tax, accounting and other IT systems will require adjustments so as to be ready for KSeF reporting – in many cases new IT tools will be needed not only to send the documents to KSeF but also to download and convert purchase invoices from KSeF to the system used by the taxpayer
Incentives for taxpayers
Beside the additional obligations, the introduction of the KSeF will lead to several simplifications, both for taxpayers as well as tax authorities:
- The system will analyse all the data automatically,
- Tax inspections will be performed more efficiently,
- The deadline for input tax return will be reduced from 60 to 40 days,
- There will be no need to issue an invoice duplicate – structured invoices will be stored in Ministry of Finance’s database.
How can we help you?
Given the new set of obligations, we can help you prepare your business in KSeF implementations. For instance, we can:
- conduct the tax workshop in the cooperation with your team in order to explain what KSeF means to your enterprise, determine what is your level of readiness for the implementation and what additional steps your organization should take within the following months,
- prepare necessary changes in the internal procedures – both taxwise and processwise,
- perform some tests of your data and its correctness towards KSeF requirements,
- deliver our IT tool to cooperate with your financial system in a more efficient way than changes of the financial system itself.
In case you would be interested in our support or if you would like to discuss KSeF in more detailed way, please feel free to contact us.
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