Since January 2026, HMRC and the Department for Business and Trade (DBT) have been holding monthly in-person workshops  to help design and develop the UK’s future electronic invoicing regime. 

Stakeholders in attendance have included representatives from the software sector, industry groups, and the tax and accountancy professions - including the ATT. 

The e-invoicing project forms part of HMRC’s wider transformation roadmap, published in July 2025, which sets out plans to increase digitalisation across the tax system.

What is electronic invoicing? 

Electronic invoicing (“e-invoicing”) is the digital exchange of invoice information between a supplier and a customer in a structured, digital format.

This enables invoices to be processed automatically within the buyer’s systems, reducing manual intervention and improving efficiency and accuracy.

E-invoicing does not include PDF or Word documents, image-based invoices (such as JPEGs), HTML invoices sent by email or displayed on a webpage, or invoices processed using Optical Character Recognition (OCR).

What will UK e-invoicing look like?

The details of the UK’s e-invoicing regime have not all been finalised. HMRC and DBT continue to work with stakeholders to refine policy design. Further information is expected later this year, with an implementation roadmap anticipated at Budget 2026.

What do we know so far?

The UK will introduce mandatory e-invoicing for VAT invoices from 2029.

Key points confirmed to date include:

• E-invoicing will be mandatory for business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-government (B2G) transactions 
• It will not be required for business-to-consumer (B2C) transactions 
• Businesses not registered for VAT will not be in scope of the mandate 
• The 2029 mandate will not include real-time reporting to HMRC, although this remains under consideration for the future

Stakeholder engagement and collaboration

The implementation roadmap, due at Budget 2026, is intended to provide businesses and advisers with greater clarity on the UK’s e-invoicing plans. Early discussions have focused on scope, compliance and timelines, with stakeholders emphasising the need for sufficient lead-in time ahead of the 2029 mandate. 

Compliance

The March workshop focused on compliance, particularly fraud prevention and penalty design. Stakeholders explored how penalties could support compliance, drawing on international approaches and other tax regimes.

The ATT and others have stressed the importance of proportionate penalties, including where responsibility may sit with software providers. A “soft landing” approach, similar to Making Tax Digital for VAT, was also suggested.

Digital exclusion

The April workshop considered how to support digitally excluded businesses. Discussions explored when a business should be classed as digitally excluded and what support would be appropriate.

Unlike Making Tax Digital for VAT, e-invoicing requires interaction between supplier and customer systems, so it is important that digitally excluded businesses are not disadvantaged. It needs to be clear where responsibility for e-invoicing sits, and the implications for input VAT recovery. 

The next workshops will focus on accessibility, communications and business readiness.

Share your views

The final in-person workshop is being held on 2 July, though throughout this period of engagement the ATT can submit written feedback to capture any points not discussed in the meetings. If there are points or comments that you would like to have considered, please contact [email protected]. 

This article reflects the position at the date of publication. If you are reading this at a later date you are advised to check that that position has not changed in the time since.   

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