Guide

Slovakia did not invent e-invoicing

Italy has sent invoices between businesses through the state since 2019, Belgium and Poland since 2026, and Germany and France are switching right now. Slovakia is in the middle of the wave, while Czechia still stands aside. We explain who introduced what, what the European Union is preparing for 2030, and why an invoice from the USA will still arrive by email.

Norbert Kovalčínfounder · STENVARD24 October 202624 October 2026

Status as of 24 October 2026. This is not legal advice. Deadlines in other countries were still being moved during 2026, so every country in the table has a source with a date. Check your own case with your accountant or tax adviser.

"Did only the Slovaks come up with this?"

This is exactly what most business owners ask when they learn that from 1 January 2027 they will send an invoice to a Slovak company as data through a postman, not as a PDF in an email. The answer has two sentences. No, mandatory electronic invoicing between businesses is a wave moving across the whole European Union, and Slovakia is in the middle of it. The only large neighbour that still stands aside is Czechia.

The abbreviations we will use: B2B is trade between two businesses (business to business), VAT (Slovak: DPH) is value added tax, and e-invoice is an invoice as a structured file that a program can read without retyping. What this means in Slovakia is described in the guide E-invoicing from 1 January 2027.

Who in the EU has e-invoicing and who is preparing it

Countries chose between two models. In the centralised model, every invoice goes through a state system that checks it and delivers it to the buyer. This is how Italy (the SdI system, Sistema di Interscambio) and Poland (KSeF, Krajowy System e-Faktur) do it. In the decentralised model, businesses exchange the invoice through certified providers, most often in the European Peppol network, and the state receives the data from them. This is how Belgium, Germany and, from 2027, Slovakia with the Digitálny poštár (the Digital Postman) do it.

More than ten EU countries therefore either already have e-invoicing between businesses or have a law with a date. Slovakia, with its January 2027, moves in the same wave as Germany, France and Spain. Hungary is an interesting middle step: you can send the invoice as a PDF, but the tax administration sees its data immediately. Czechia has no obligation and has not published a deadline. Almost every country in the table has moved its deadline at least once, which is worth knowing before someone says that Slovakia is late or in a hurry.

ViDA: a common framework from July 2030

ViDA (VAT in the Digital Age) is a package that the Council of the EU adopted on 11 March 2025 as Directive 2025/516. From April 2025, every member state can introduce mandatory e-invoicing for domestic trade without asking the European Commission for a derogation. Until then, Italy, Poland and Romania all needed one. This is also why deadlines took off after 2025.

From 1 July 2030, ViDA adds a second layer: e-invoicing for cross-border trade between businesses in the EU. The invoice will have to follow the European standard EN 16931, it will be issued within 10 days of delivery, and its data will go to the tax administration transaction by transaction instead of in today's summary statement. In Slovakia, the recapitulative statement and the control statement will therefore be filed for the last time for the period ending on 30 June 2030. Countries that already have their own system must align it with the European standard by 1 January 2035.

For Czech businesses this means that from July 2030 they will send e-invoices at least in trade with businesses from other EU countries. Whether Czechia will introduce a domestic obligation sooner, it has not said yet.

Third countries: an invoice from the USA will still arrive by email

The second question is: "When I buy something from the USA, I still get the invoice by email, right?" Yes. An American supplier does not follow Slovak or European law, and neither of them tells it to send an invoice into a network. The Finančná správa (the Slovak Financial Administration) says this directly: the eFaktúra system is meant only for exchanging invoices within Slovakia, and cross-border invoices come into play only in 2030.

• The USA has no VAT and no federal e-invoicing obligation. There is only a voluntary network of businesses, DBNAlliance. An invoice from software or from an online shop arrives as a PDF in an email, or you download it from the supplier's portal.
• The United Kingdom has announced mandatory e-invoicing for invoices with VAT from 2029, through the Peppol network. It is to publish a detailed plan at the autumn 2026 budget. For a Slovak buyer this changes nothing: a British invoice will go through the British system and will reach you the way it does today.
• Switzerland requires an e-invoice only from suppliers of the federal administration. There is no obligation between businesses.

You handle VAT on such a purchase as you have until now. For a service from a foreign supplier, you declare the tax yourself, which is called self-assessment (§ 69 para. 3 of the VAT Act). For goods from a country outside the EU, you pay VAT on import to the customs office (§ 69 para. 8). For goods from another EU country, this is an acquisition of goods and you again declare the tax yourself (§ 69 para. 6). The invoice as a document does not need any network for this.

Your own invoice abroad is a different matter. From 1 July 2030, the Financial Administration expects the obligation to issue an e-invoice to extend to cross-border supplies as well, to the EU and to third countries alike, according to its questions and answers. How this will look in practice will be shown only by guidance before 2030. It does not apply to a received invoice from the USA even then.

One more misunderstanding that is often heard: the electronic mailbox on slovensko.sk has nothing to do with this. It serves for official communication, decisions and requests. The e-invoice goes through a postman that you choose yourself, not through the state mailbox.

What this means for a Slovak company

From January 2027, the postman will cover one group of documents for you: invoices from Slovak VAT payers. They will arrive as data and your program will read them. Everything else will stay where it is today:

• invoices from online shops and from foreign suppliers in email as PDF,
• invoices from Slovak non-payers of VAT, who do not have to issue e-invoices, also in email,
• receipts and documents from eKasa (the Slovak cash register system) as a photo or on paper.

A company will therefore have two document paths at once: one structured through the postman, the other as before. It needs one place where both meet and where a document is checked, approved and recorded in the accounts. A document from email is then taken over by Kovrin, our system, which prepares and records it, and does nothing that touches money or leaves the company without your click.

Why countries do this

It is not a bureaucrat's idea. It is a gap in VAT: the difference between the tax a state should collect and the tax it actually collected. According to a report of the European Commission from December 2025, this gap in the EU in 2023 was over EUR 100 billion, and in Slovakia around EUR 1 billion. Slovakia is improving, though: from 16.5% in 2019 to 10.5% in 2023.

The e-invoice aims at this directly. An invoice is visible at the moment it is issued, not a month later in the control statement. The tax administration sees both sides of a transaction at once and can compare them by machine. Italy justified its request for a derogation with exactly this as early as 2017, and the Council of the EU granted it. For businesses, the promised return is the end of retyping invoices and, from 2030, the end of the control statement.

What to get done by the end of 2026 is in the guide E-invoicing from 1 January 2027. Whether your Slovak buyers and suppliers are already in the Peppol network, you can check in the tool stenvard.com/peppol (in Slovak, for Slovak companies only): enter a company ID (IČO) or a VAT ID (DIČ) and you will see through which provider they receive e-invoices.