Electronic invoicing is already in force in 423,000 taxpayers in Ecuador, two weeks after it becomes mandatory

Marcela Santos, underwear seller in premises located in a shopping center in Quito, issues the last physical invoices from an already battered booklet. He says that these days his boss and all the staff are crazy to complete an inventory and finish the process of obtaining the signature and electronic invoicing. They know that this November 29 is the deadline for their business to adhere to the electronic invoicing system.

Like Marcela’s sales site, many other businesses are preparing their documents to comply with this legal requirement, which has been in place for at least eight years.

Thus, the Internal Revenue Service (SRI) reported that as of November 14, 2022, 423,000 taxpayers are already in the electronic invoicing scheme, of these 332,000 are individuals and 91,000 are companies. The figure reveals that some 85,000 taxpayers have increased between October and November. Most are natural persons (75,000) and secondly companies (7,000).

The powerful increase is also reflected in the number of customer requests that software and service providers have received these days to obtain both electronic signature and invoicing.

Ricardo Vallejo, manager of Iconta, an Ecuadorian company that provides accounting systems, comments that between October and November of this year the activity has been crazy. “There is a fairly high demand, customers want the service for now,” he says. He considers that the almost two weeks that remain of the term will be somewhat chaotic. In any case, he comments that clients can take about 48 hours to obtain the service if they have all the papers in order.

Vallejo, who assures that his company has managed to deliver the service to at least 1,600 clients, reminds taxpayers that in order to carry out a successful process they must have the ID, from the RUC, a typical photo selfie. Thus they can obtain the software that will allow them to issue invoices from any computer or device in the world. He says that in the case of Iconta they also provide a training service on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so that they can manage the program in a solvent manner.

He explains that the costs are not high, since obtaining an electronic signature can cost $20, while plans can start at $10 for 25 documents.

Although at the moment almost half a million taxpayers are already reached with the program, the SRI announced that it will incorporate “ex officio to the electronic invoicing scheme to 697,000 taxpayers.” This means, according to Francisco Briones, director of the SRI, that digitized taxpayers could reach more than one million.

The official explains that before there was a requirement to obtain electronic invoicing and it was that the taxpayer had to request an authorization from the SRI and demonstrate that he met certain requirements. To eliminate that step, rather as SRI “we automatically authorize those who already have the requirements and are enabled.” He further indicates that these 697,000 would be apart from the more than 400,000 that are already registered. “The idea is that all the taxpayers are enabled, without going through this procedure, and it would be up to them to obtain the electronic signature and invoice,” he points out.

In addition to this decision, the SRI has sought to provide facilities for taxpayers to issue their invoice in the most agile way.

• Enabling SRI y Yo online (SRI’s free billing system) for all types of taxpayers (previously it was only for natural persons not required to keep accounts) and simplification of the product creation process in the application.
• The debit agreement requirement for authorization as issuers of electronic receipts was eliminated.
• The reception of electronic receipts with electronic signature obtained with an ID was enabled (previously only signatures obtained with RUC were allowed)
• Approval of two new certifying entities in the electronic receipt scheme.

The Internal Revenue Service also reported that As of November 14, 92,883 taxpayers have issued electronic receipts through the SRI y Yo online application. (YO)