e-Invoicing delays amid over 766,000 registrations on first day

KUALA LUMPUR: The rollout of e-Invoicing has faced a hurdle on the first day as companies complain about the delays to get into the Inland Revenue Board's (IRB) MyInvois system.

The system received an overwhelming e-invoice submissions, with more than 520,000 succesful deliveries as of noon on Aug 1.

"The mandatory implementation of e-Invoicing for companies with annual income or sales exceeding RM100 million marks a new era in efforts to digitize and strengthen the country's taxation system.

"The e-invoice receipt as at 12:00 noon shows that the number of successful deliveries has reached 520,000 and the MyInvois system is ready to be used," the IRB said.

According to IRB's Facebook post, more than 766,000 e-invoices succesfully registered on the first day.

National Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Malaysia (NCCIM) council member Wong Man Yee said most of the large corporations, with revenue of more than RM100 million, involved in complex business transactions, various business divisions and branches, different sales channels, deploy numerous systems and voluminous customers and suppliers.

She, who is also an executive director at Crowe KL Tax Sdn Bhd, said most of the large corporations still working through their e-Invoice transition challenges and resolving the transmission to the IRB.

One of the challenges is change of billing arrangement, she said.

"Prior to e-Invoice, local corporate agents sends invoices to businesses but now the businesses are required to issue self-billed e-Invoice to the agents," she explained.

Wong also noted the complexity of integrating existing accounting, enterprise resource planning (ERP) and point of sale (POS) systems, with IRB's MyInvois Portal.

She also said there is a complex business arrangement whereby the businesses, together with partners, need to review and agree on the e-Invoice treatment, whether under agency arrangement or outright sale arrangement.

"There is also a relatively short timeline for system integration as the IRB's Software Development Kit (SDK) last updated on June 28, 2024 while most of the countries allows about two years for system integration and transition.

"Additionally, e-Invoice treatment rapidly changed by IRB, where the e-Invoice General Guideline and e-Invoice Specific Guideline were updated for more than 10 times," Wong added.

However, she said the first six months grace period provides flexibility for taxpayers to issue consolidated e-Invoice and Self-Billed e-Invoice, supporting businesses preparedness.

She noted that the general tax identification number (TINs) provided by IRB caters to various buyers and suppliers when information is not made available to taxpayers.

"Availability of MyInvois Portal could be used by any businesses for creating all types of e-Invoice with both individual form creation and batch upload feature.

"This is very useful for those businesses which system integration require more time to do so," she added.

Source: NST