E-invoicing mandatory from 1 July 2030: what changes for your firm?

What has the government decided?

On 11 September 2026, the government sent its outline letter on electronic invoicing and reporting (Contourenbrief elektronisch factureren en rapporteren) to the Dutch House of Representatives. It sets out this timeline:

• 1 July 2030: e-invoicing becomes mandatory for invoices between businesses, within the Netherlands and within the EU. For transactions with businesses in other EU countries, digital reporting per transaction starts on the same date, including for purchases from other member states.
• 1 July 2031: domestic transactions between businesses are also reported digitally to the Dutch Tax Administration.

The date for cross-border invoices comes from Europe: the ViDA directive (VAT in the Digital Age) requires all member states to introduce it from 1 July 2030. For domestic invoices, the Netherlands could choose for itself. The government chooses the same date, so a business does not have to follow two sets of rules for clients in the Netherlands and clients elsewhere in the EU.

Is it law yet?

No. The letter describes the plans; the rules themselves will follow in a bill. The plan is a public consultation in autumn 2026 and submission to the House before summer 2027. Until then, mainly the details can still change. For cross-border invoices, the obligation is already set in European legislation.

What counts as an e-invoice?

An e-invoice is an invoice in a structured electronic format that software can process automatically. A PDF is not, not even when it is sent by email. The government wants to allow only the European standard (EN 16931). It has two technical formats: UBL and UN/CEFACT CII. In the Netherlands, UBL is by far the most widely used. The government does not want to allow sector standards, for example from construction or energy, for domestic invoices.

How a UBL file is structured and why it is more reliable to process than a scan is explained in our article on Processing UBL and e-invoices automatically.

Who is covered, and who is not?

The obligation applies to invoices between businesses. Invoices to consumers are not covered. The government wants to keep the current exceptions to the invoicing obligation as far as possible and create no new ones.

• Small business scheme (KOR): anyone using the KOR (turnover up to € 20.000 a year) already does not have to issue an invoice for most transactions and stays exempt from e-invoicing and reporting. Such a business must, however, be able to receive e-invoices from suppliers.
• VAT-exempt supplies: for supplies that are exempt from VAT, such as those of schools and hospitals, the current exemption from the invoicing obligation remains.
• Existing special rules: the simplified invoice and the special rules for retail, travel agencies and resellers, among others, remain in place for now.
• Cash accounting scheme: businesses using the cash accounting scheme, such as shops and restaurants, get no exception. If such a business issues an invoice to another business, it must also be an e-invoice.

There will be no separate threshold for micro-businesses: the government considers the KOR sufficient for that.

What is not settled yet?

A few things that matter in practice have not been decided yet:

• Which network e-invoices must travel over, and what role Peppol will play.
• Exactly which data per transaction goes to the Tax Administration.
• What it will cost businesses: the government is still having the administrative burden researched.

For the current state of affairs, consult the Tax Administration or your adviser. We will update this article once the bill is published.

What does this mean for an accountancy firm?

For a firm, it plays out on two sides: what comes in at clients, and what clients send themselves.

Purchases. From July 2030, invoices from Dutch and European suppliers arrive as e-invoices instead of PDFs. For processing, that is good news: the data no longer has to be read from an image. But not everything changes. Till receipts and simplified invoices remain, and suppliers from outside the EU, such as many software services from the United States, will often keep sending a PDF. A firm will therefore keep a mixed flow.

Sales. Clients who now create their invoices in Word or Excel will have to switch to software that can create e-invoices before 1 July 2030. In most accounting packages that will be a setting; a client without a package will need a new program. From July 2031, reporting to the Tax Administration is added. According to the government, the accounting package can largely do that automatically.

What can you do now?

• Map out which clients create their sales invoices outside an accounting package. That is where most of the work is.
• Ask your software suppliers how they receive and send e-invoices, and whether they can handle CII as well as UBL.
• Find out which clients use the KOR. They do not have to send e-invoices, but they must be able to receive them.
• Start by receiving e-invoices. That is already allowed when supplier and customer agree on it, and it saves manual work straight away.

How does Agentancy handle this?

Up to here, this article has been general explanation; this part is about our own software. Agentancy reads UBL invoices that arrive by email or upload directly, without image recognition, and posts them in the client's accounting package with the same checks as any other document. If a PDF and a UBL file arrive together in one email, they are treated as one invoice.

Agentancy does not read CII files at the moment. And Agentancy is not a Peppol access point: anyone who wants to receive e-invoices via Peppol needs a connection through their accounting package or another provider. How Agentancy processes the rest of the flow is explained on posting invoices automatically.

Source

Outline letter on electronic invoicing and reporting, Dutch House of Representatives, 11 September 2026 (parliamentary paper 31066-1576), with the annex on the government's choices.