By
Published by London Business Matters (January/February 2026), London Chamber of Commerce & Industry, page 8.
Tax Office eInvoicing – Here To Help?
Ronald Reagan once quipped, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” My unthinking reaction to tax office eInvoicing (TOeInvoicing) was similar, terror.
EInvoicing automates the journey from invoice creation to payment, improving efficiency, reducing errors, and speeding up payment cycles. TOeInvoicing extends this so tax authorities—such as HMRC—receive the same invoice data electronically. The aim is greater tax compliance, reduced fraud, and improved transparency through near real-time visibility of business transactions.
Ambitious
Chile pioneered eInvoicing in 2001, and today more than 100 nations have enacted legislation. In many jurisdictions, requirements apply only to business-to-government transactions, large deals, or companies above certain revenue thresholds. Yet many countries have ambitious plans for full TOeInvoicing within the next five years.
Revenue
Italy’s experience first caught my attention in 2014. TOeInvoicing there helped raise VAT revenue by around €2 billion around 2020. The EU’s eInvoicing Directive 2014/55/EU mandated a common invoicing format, EN 16931, in 2020, and the bloc aims for full business e-invoicing by 2030. With so much potential revenue, several countries are progressing even faster.
HMRC, meanwhile, is occupied with its Making Tax Digital programme—a push to become ‘digital-first’ by 2030. Consultations occur, yet it remains unclear where TOeInvoicing fits in.
Benefits
At first glance, TOeInvoicing feels like another layer of government oversight, wrapped reassuringly in phrases like “it won’t hurt a bit.” But beyond fraud reduction, it could bring two substantial business benefits: improved economic insight and better SME financing.
Macroeconomic policy relies on two elusive indicators: the quantity and velocity of money. Macroeconomists often perform no better than astrologers or augurists. Granular data on monetary obligations and flows could transform forecasting and decision-making around interest rates, public spending, taxation, trade balances, and exchange rates.
Receivables
The second benefit concerns receivables. HMRC, through TOeInvoicing, would effectively hold a definitive register of invoices. Today, lenders financing receivables lack an authoritative record of which invoices are pledged and to whom. In the US in 2025, First Brands and Tricolor collapsed with hidden liabilities tied to supply-chain and receivables financing, throttling such funding.
Collateral
A modest extension of TOeInvoicing to confirm payments made would give the government the data to enforce late payment legislation and interest on late payments, as well as improve macroeconomic management data. A public register of ‘pledged’ invoices being used as collateral for loans could unlock major growth in factoring and discounting—an enormous boon for small businesses. The government would be here to help national cashflow.
As TOeInvoicing debates intensify, especially around fraud, we should champion its potential to improve economic management and expand SME financing—and perhaps prove The Gipper wrong after all.