A standard for invoices seems like something that an accounting body should create that is optional for businesses, not something mandatory created by the government. People will generally follow an optional standard to make their own lives easier, but a mandatory one introduces a compliance middleman into the invoicing process.

▲

perlgeek 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

In the EU there is the "reverse charge" mechanism for VAT when commerce crosses country borders, and it is often used for defrauding EU countries / governments.

The invoicing standard is an attempt to mitigate reverse charge fraud by gathering more machine-readable data. Some countries even demand that b2b invoices are sent to the country, which then dispatches a copy to the recipient.

Knowing this background, it's pretty clear why the EU is making it mandatory.

Personally, in the abstract I like the idea to mandate the use of an open standard, I think we have way too many inefficiencies from treating many things as text documents that could be data structures. I don't like this particular standard though, it's bloated and the result of a typical top-down process.

I much prefer it when there are competing standards for a while, and one or a couple of winner emerge on technical merits. THEN I have no objections to a regulatory body picking a standard and mandating it.

▲

looperhacks 3 days ago | parent [-]

As I understood it, this _is_ the standard that won. It's not like the EU invented it.

	▲	daliusd 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		As far as I understand there are multiple XML invoice formats and EN 16931 accepts at least two: UBL and CII. At least in theory. I have no idea how it is going to work out in practice, but I will learn the hard way :-) I have invoicing software as side-project and I have decided to make it usable in EU.

▲

Fraaaank 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Electronic invoicing makes the live of the receiver easier. The sender has to adapt the standard.

Besides, many standards have been created over the past 20 years, yet most invoices are still only sent as PDF.

▲

cogman10 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Having worked with accounting body standards (NAIC), I can tell you that it really does nothing to improve quality. Especially when parts of the standard encode things like COBOL PIC number symbols. [1]

[1] https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/cobol-zos/6.4.0?topic=arithmetic...

▲

autoexec 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> People will generally follow an optional standard to make their own lives easier

People invent their own standard to make their own lives easier at the cost of making everyone else's lives miserable which is exactly what the European Committee for Standardization was intended to prevent.

▲

croes 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If you want something to work in multiple countries, you have little choice. Otherwise you get x standards

▲

clickety_clack 3 days ago | parent [-]

I think there’s a difference between _wanting_ something to work and _needing_ something to work. Enforced standardized invoicing might be a very tidy and neat solution, but tidiness and neatness are not a good enough argument to mandate it in my opinion. There’s no end to the areas of our lives that could be regulated if that’s the standard we’re aiming for, and I don’t particularly want to live in such a uniform, straightjacketed environment.

▲

autoexec 3 days ago | parent [-]

Would you rather governments insist on everyone using the same format when invoices are passed around or would you rather have massive amounts of taxpayer money wasted on managing countless conflicting standards, any number of which may also include their own security issues. At a certain scale it just makes sense to say "Okay everyone, we have to pick one way to do this".

If tidiness and neatness are not a good enough argument to mandate this taxpayer savings, time efficiency, and better software should be.

Companies who insist on being precious about their favored invoice format can invest their own time and money on conversion tools that let them convert invoices they get into whatever format they like for their own internal records and convert them to meet the standard again when sending invoices out. That leaves them free to use what they want without making everyone else deal with their mess.

▲

clickety_clack 3 days ago | parent [-]

Have you ever actually dealt with invoices? I have hired many many contractors in construction and tech, and I’ve never thought it to be that bad. Definitely not enough of a mess to justify another rule for how I’m supposed to run a business.

	▲	autoexec 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Did you have to deal with invoices from companies across 27+ different countries? Did you automate any of it at all? Scale is a much bigger deal than the complexity of any one invoice. When you're dealing with hundreds of thousands if not millions of invoices from all over the place it makes sense to have it standardized so that software can be developed to do most your work with those invoices automatically and consistently. I've worked on automating high volume document processing from a much smaller number of companies (mainly just from those within the US), just one or two outliers can massively expand your codebase and when those companies are free to change their formats on a whim in whatever why suits them it can break everything in ways that can be immediately catastrophic or very subtle but no less disastrous.

▲

victorbjorklund 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The accountancy bodies are national so it would end up with one standard per country. But yea should probably not be mandatory.

▲

quitit 3 days ago | parent [-]

Other major countries that have adopted eInvoicing have kept it optional for a few reasons:

- It's a barrier for small businesses, or those which seldomly invoice, such as craft and hobby businesses (particularly remote online businesses).

- Large companies see eInvoicing as a cost saving method and force it upon their vendors. This reduces the need to make it mandatory and provides a financial incentive for companies to adopt eInvoicing (i.e. more carrot, less stick.)

The EU has a solid trend of finding ways to self-harm when introducing reforms. This self-harm story segue's into how the EU is considering implementing an Australian-style social media restriction for children:

Quote from abc.net.au below:

European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen told the audience she had been "inspired" by Australia's "bold" move to introduce the ban.

"As a mother of seven children and grandmother of five, I share their view," she said.

The European Parliament has since passed a non-legislative report that would set a minimum age of 16 for social media, while allowing those aged 13 to 15 with parental consent.

-- end quote --

Here the EU is walking down the path of another bad implementation.

Limiting the age for social media only works if it's mandatory for all children, otherwise kids will just pester their parents for access. In the EU's plan the parents become the "bad guy" in that arrangement, the home becomes the battleground for obtaining access to social media.

The EU's plan also means that social media remains relevant for young people, where access may be needed for arranging social activities and sports, and those which don't have it are either inconvenienced or miss out. Meanwhile the Australian implementation removes that purpose as no kids are allowed on the platform, thus there are no "haves" and "have nots" kids.

Finally, and probably most importantly, advertisers, data brokers, and bad actors will still continue to target children through social media networks, since they will still be there in useful numbers.

▲

victorbjorklund 2 days ago | parent [-]

Yea, but EU can of course have a common standard and not make it mandatory. It’s not more strange than US making federal standard vs different standards in each state.

	▲	quitit 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Yes I agree, and this would be the ideal and most efficient outcome, and it should be repeated: an EU-wide common standard, which can then be optionally adopted by businesses in each member state alongside not forbidding existing invoicing methods. In this scenario we can anticipate that business practices will shift to the common standard over time, and that would include the accounting software used by new businesses: resulting in a phased conversion with minimal disruptions to running a business.

▲

plantain 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That's just not how the EU functions.

▲

looperhacks 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> People will generally follow an optional standard to make their own lives easier

You must be new to the internet /s

A company does not gain anything by sending "better" invoices that follow a standard. Only if they receive standardized invoices, but usually not enough to pay extra for it. The fact that standardized invoices haven't happened yet without legislation should be proof of that