Do you think that electronic invoicing, or e-invoicing for short, is a useful tool or just another unsuccessful attempt to eliminate the level of tax evasion that has always distinguished our country?
I ask this because, about a month ago, A.P.I., the SME Association we belong to and I often mention in this blog, has carried out a survey for the L’Espresso magazine among its members on this topic, the results of which showed that 54% of entrepreneurs consider e-invoicing to be a waste of time.
Today, a few weeks since this new law entered into force, I have decided to share some thoughts with you on the subject and to do so with Antonella Silvagni, who supervises all the administration activities in MICROingranaggi and is therefore directly involved in the matter.
In an interesting interview with Alessandro Santoro, Professor in Finance Sciences at Milan-Bicocca University in Milan, published once again by L’Espresso he commented that
this operation would work if the audience of the subjects involved was close to the totality of the transactions, something that does not happen because of the exceptions foreseen by the subsidised schemes (flat tax in primis),
or, alternatively, if the Inland Revenue obviated this shortfall by analyszing the data collected through the electronic invoicing, which is unlikely to happen given the lack of suitable resources (statistical and IT).
We do basically agree with this line of thought. So if on the one hand the “small” businesses have been “pardoned” by the flat tax (if the term “small” is acceptable given the increase to € 65,000 in turnover foreseen by the new regime) on the other, the large businesses continue to exploit their shortcuts with offices in tax havens and various interlocking shell enterprises,
the small / medium business (like MICROingranaggi) has endured yet another burden, which has generated considerable costs both in terms of money and time, and – more than likely – will not produce much more revenue than before, because, at least as far as our sector is concerned, everything, or almost everything was already declared.
Although I do not have any certain figures, I believe that invoicing in the industrial sectors has always been above board.
Then there is the aspect of the controls, without which the whole point of electronic invoicing would be worthless. From 1 January to 11 February the Exchange System (ES) managed by the Inland Revenue received 183 million files, of which only 4% were discarded. Now, if we consider that the ES also accepted invoices with errors that were to be blocked (such as, for instance, documents with outdated VAT rates or with incorrect total amounts),
it makes you wonder if the controls were rather limited on purpose, probably to prevent the system from crashing during this initial phase where no sanctions are yet in place.
We just have to wait and see if and when more stringent and stricter controls will be put in place (which, as I mentioned, are indispensable).
To conclude, I think it is important to mention another aspect that has proven to be rather a painful one.
Everyone (or almost everyone) has encountered huge problems with the software houses, who were not ready to provide the tools to respond to this imminent demand, despite the fact that the law was approved some time ago.
Maybe they were counting on an extension, as usually happens in Italy? Or perhaps they received the information required to develop and test their integration with the Exchange System too late? Or perhaps, as often happens, the obligations foreseen by the law were not as clear as they would have wanted? Or, more than likely, a combination of all these factors. The fact is that, yet again, the SMEs are the ones to bear the brunt.
