Romanian entrepreneurs ask Govt. for longer transitory period on e-factura requirements

The entrepreneurs, members of the National Council of Small and Medium Enterprises in Romania (CNIPMMR), will meet on February 13 with prime minister Marcel Ciolacu, requesting the extension of the grace period in which fines are not applied for companies' deviations from the obligations regarding the e-factura electronic invoicing system until December 31, 2024.

This implies that the next step in implementing the electronic invoicing system, scheduled for July 2023, would also be deferred.

As of July, no invoice would be considered legal unless loaded in the centralized system under the current regulations.

The entrepreneurs claim there are too many technical problems with the government's centralized system and with the electronic signatures provided by private third parties. Each week, the government announces that more bugs were fixed, which indicates that the system is working better but also shows the multitude of bugs existing in the system when it was launched on January 1 – a couple of days before it was officially announced.

No fines are applied for not uploading invoices in the RO e-Invoice system until March 31, 2024, but SME entrepreneurs want the extension of this grace period until the end of 2024.

"We request the extension until December 31, 2024, of the deadlines for not applying the sanctions regarding the failure to upload invoices on time, respectively the registration of invoices not received through RO e-factura. We request information campaigns for entrepreneurs regarding this e-factura. (...) We also request tutorials to inform entrepreneurs more clearly, information campaigns, improving the platform, because there are many problems," the president of the CNIPMMR, Florin Jianu, said during a conference on February 9, quoted by Startupcafe.ro.

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