Greece to start with full scale e-invoicing from early 2012

As part of a major overhauling to decrease their global the Greek government aims to save more than 3 billion Euro annually with e-invoicing. They also focus on reducing tax fraud and increasing tax earnings. In the meantime enterprises will allegedly benefit save than 1 billion Euro per year from the adoption of electronic invoicing, according to the Greek government

First quarter of 2012
The plan that aims to make sure that  all financial transactions between the public sector and enterprises be made exclusively electronically, is expected to introduce electronic invoicing in the first quarter of 2012.

“Electronic invoicing is not widespread used today. The plan is to lift a large administrative and financial burden on enterprises gradually, freeing up significant financial sources to other more productive activities,”

Theoretical cost savings
The Greek government calculated that the cost of each invoice issued on paper by enterprises ranged between 7-15 euros, while the cost of an e-invoice was between 0.60-4.0 euros.

The annual number of invoices issued in Greece is said to surpass 200-250 million euro. A quick calculation shows that savings could reach 1 billion Euro. However that calculation is made under the theoretical assumption that a paper invoice costs between 7-15 Euro. Most of the times an invoice is much much cheaper to create/process.

So this virtual money that could be used for other virtual productive activities and virtual investments instead of being spent to sustain an antiquated bureaucracy.

Reducing tax fraud and increasing tax income
Bruno Koch revealed in this discussion that he was involved by several Greek stakeholders as consultant on e-invoicing.

He clearly felt, that the Greek objectives to implement did not differ from the ones of Brazil: Push e-invoicing with the aim to increase controls and tax revenues. He also expect that soon other European countries with high debts and shadow economy will enhance their e-invoicing objectives towards the ones of Latin America.

Guillaume Hatt pointed out that the current Economical and Debt status of most European countries could quickly turn around the regulations objectives from efficiency to control. Just like in the Latin American countries.