SAT: Paper or physical billing is without effect this Friday, July 1

Check book, physical or paper invoices will be suspended as of this Friday, July 1, and everything will be done electronically.

Fernando Suriano Buezo, SAT Collection Mayor, informed Prensa Libre this Sunday, July 26, that 11,447 taxpayers are pending incorporation into the General VAT Regime for FEL.

50% of taxpayers or 185 thousand 864 already use the FEL system or issuing invoices, while 47% or 176 thousand 780 do not have operations reported, within the General VAT Regime.

Taxpayers who are pending to subscribe to FEL represent 2%, since the total of the General VAT Regime is 374 thousand 91, according to figures as of June 24.

What is going to happen? 

The official explained that all operations of paper invoices of the VAT General Regime will be annulled, and the authorizations are suspended, and the list of taxpayers who had authorization has already been transferred to the Supervision Intendancy, and programs will be made to verify that they do not issue those invoices or invoice in physical documents.

In this regard, he recommended users to download the SAT FEL application to carry out their operations, the process is done online and the mayor urged users not to leave it at the last minute with a virtual agency.

Warn possible consequences

With the general VAT system, the majority of taxpayers are included in all the events subject to this tax, declared tax consultant Juan Carlos Paredes of the Parsa firm.

For taxpayers who do not join the FEL, but are obliged, one of the problems is that they will not be able to invoice; that is to say, the invoices that they consider they can issue printed or paper - checkbooks - the buyers are not going to accept, since they may have drawbacks, such as the document being used for a claim for the refund of the tax credit.

The main problem for taxpayers is that they won't be able to bill, and if they can't, businesses won't have sales, which is the main implication, Paredes said.

In addition, even if they have a balance of printed invoices, the buyer or final consumer must be careful not to receive them because they will not be valid, but the electronic ones.

One of the risks is that the tax administrator penalizes businesses that are not in the FEL, but that continue to issue printed invoices -checkbook-, because they are already obliged.

Information crossing

With the FEL, the Collection Intendancy of the Superintendency of Tax Administration can now determine several indicators in real time, among them, for example: the pattern of consumption, purchases, sales, and even determine the value of commercialization to consumers in the points of sale in certain places, to inventories in any part of the country, to what they have called "data mining" that in a matter of minutes has the capacity to make the deployments.