These are the major changes coming to e-invoicing for self-employed people in Spain

The Spanish tax office, Agencia Tributaria, has enabled a new platform for receiving verifiable invoices so that software providers can start sending invoices from self-employed workers who wish to join the Verifactu system. For now, it is optional for businesses and will allow them to send their invoicing records to the tax office in real time.

As explained by the specialised portal Autónomos y Emprendedores, the platform is live so that companies can start trialling the software and start adjusting their operations. From July, all software will be obliged to have this system operational.

The activation of Verifactu marks a further milestone in the process of implementing the anti-fraud act. The possibility of sending invoices in real time to the tax office is one of the main components of the new regulation for invoicing programs. Suppliers will have to adapt to the new law as of July, and companies will have until January to use the program.

In the case of the beneficiaries, i.e. self-employed people who use these programs, the deadline for adapting their old programs to the anti-fraud law is longer. According to the tax authorities, the application of this legislation will be postponed until 1 January 2026 for commercial companies. In the case of self-employed individuals, the deadline will be longer and they will have until 1 July 2026 to stop using their old programs or update them and use one with Verifactu.

Those who want to start testing and submitting their invoicing records to the tax office may already do so. "Although in reality, it will be the software providers who will guide this process and see if the system they have implemented works, so that in July it will be ready and error-free," the portal points out.

The recently approved regulation for invoicing software contains a chapter on the characteristics and operation of the new system for submitting invoices to the tax office, which must be incorporated by software.

Verifactu works in a similar way to the Immediate Information System (SII), to which certain companies with an annual turnover of more than six million euros are already obliged, or 'Ticket BAI', which is also compulsory for businesses in the Basque Country. Unlike these, for the time being, membership of Verifactu is voluntary for self-employed people.

For self-employed people who choose the option of 'activating' Verifactu, the remission of invoicing records to the tax office will be carried out with messages in XML format with the contents and structure established in the law. In addition, these computer systems must implement a control mechanism based on the waiting time between transmissions, which will initially take 60 seconds.

The new system would work as follows: the software will send the first set of invoicing records to the tax office. The administration will return, among other data, an updated value of the waiting time between dispatches.

Once received, the files sent to the office will be subjected to various quality checks. If everything is correct and the invoice passes the filter, an affirmative response will be sent from the tax authorities, although there could be further checks by the tax inspectors.

If the invoice is rejected because it does not comply with the established validations, an error code will be issued. The computer system will periodically retry, at least once every hour, to resend the invoice.