No penalties can be expected until the end of September 2020 in relation to invoice data reporting

Tax & Legal Alert | PwC Hungary | June 24, 2020

The Hungarian Tax Authority has recently published an official statement regarding the data reporting obligations applicable as of 1 July 2020 – related to the online invoice data reporting obligation, and the domestic recapitulative statement (M sheets of the VAT return) requirements – and announced a moratorium period for penalties.

The tax authority officially stated that in case of certain conditions, no default penalty could be expected within the period of 1 July 2020 – 30 September 2020 in relation to the online invoice data reporting obligation in case certain conditions are met.

As detailed in our latest newsflash about this topic, significant changes are to be expected in relation to the completion of the domestic recapitulative statement and the online invoice data reporting obligation as of 1 July 2020 (all invoices which were issued by a Hungarian taxpayer to another regarding domestic supply transactions should be reported real-time to the tax authority regardless of the charged VAT amount and additionally, all of those domestic purchase invoices in which case the taxpayer exercises its VAT deduction right should be indicated on the domestic recapitulative statement of the VAT return). However, the tax authority has announced a moratorium period in respect of the penalties.

According to the tax authority’s official statement, no default penalty could be expected within the moratorium period in case the following conditions are met:

• reporting obligation applicable to those domestic purchase invoices where the charged VAT is less than HUF 100,000
• reporting obligation applicable to those domestic supply invoices where the charged VAT is less than HUF 100,000
• in case the online invoice data reporting obligation is not performed within 4 days - counted from the issue date of the invoice - but the data reporting obligation was performed on the 5th day counted from the date of issue (in case of manual invoicing where the charged VAT is between HUF 100,000 - 500,000).

In light of the aforementioned, the moratorium period will be applicable to those taxpayers who are currently obliged to provide data online real time to the tax authority, solely to those invoices in which cases the charged VAT amount doesn’t reach the current HUF 100,000 threshold.

Taxpayers, who are currently not obliged to provide invoice data online to the tax authority in relation to their domestic supply invoices, are exempted from default penalty during the moratorium period after 1 July only if they are registered at the Online Invoice system of the tax authority by the time of issuing their first invoice in which respect online invoice data reporting obligation would emerge at their side.

Irrespectively of the announced moratorium period, we recommend taxpayers to start preparing for the changes applicable as of 1 July 2020 at the earliest opportunity in order to comply with the invoice data reporting smoothly and without any errors later on, past the grace period.

For more information, please contact your regular contact person, or László Deák (laszlo.deak@pwc.com) or Gábor Farkas (gabor.farkas@pwc.com).