UPDATE 25/1/16: New numbers on Mexcian e-invoicing volumes.

Representatives of the Federal Revenue of Brazil (RFB), the Tax Administration Service of Mexico (SAT) and the Federal Public Revenue Administration of Argentina (AFIP), with the director of the Inter-American Center of Tax Administrations (CIAT) met at the AFIP to develop and implement a government compliant of Electronic Invoice Pilot Program for International Trade.

The program’s objective is to establish an electronic invoice information system between the three administrations that initiate the pilot (Argentina, Mexico and Brazil), and once in place participation will be extended to other member countries of the Inter-American Center of Tax Administrations (CIAT)

The three tax initiating administrations are unique sponsoring agencies, because all three of them have successful implemented the massive use of compliant electronic invoicing. The widespread use of electronic invoicing simplifies the task to comply with tax laws through the use of technology. It also facilitates on-line control and helps to increase the reliability of operations.

On the occasion of the meeting, CIAT proposed an the exchange model using international electronic vouchers.The project proposes a scheme of events with respect to new billing.

More about the FEI, Factura Electrónica Internacional:

• The FEI (International Electronic Invoice) is an envelope containing a minimum set of common fields to be extracted from the original invoice as it was generated in the country where it is made?. The envelope contains an electronic signature.
• The model is designed in an architecture with a central node to interact with all countries.
• The objective of the system is to ensure that all countries have knowledge of the receipts that were issued, avoiding having to consult each seperate system of the participating countries.
• CIAT took on the software development to make the Central Node available,
• Participating countries should develop twoway web services -that respect the agreed structures and rules- to connect to this Central Node.
• The participating countries could also encompass the USA and Canada.

To put things in context, based on SAT numbers:

• 14 million certified e-invoices are exchanged daily
• 420 million certified e-invoices are exchanged each month
• More than 5,000 million E-invoices are processed each year
• 90% of all of the certified e-invoices in Mexico are processed by Authorized Service Providers, PAC (Proveedor Autorizado de Certificación).