The Hungarian government advocates electronic invoices in the battle against VAT fraud. Since 1 January 2021 all B2B and B2C transactions in Hungary must be reported to the tax authorities in real-time.
Discover what this means if you want to do business in Hungary and what steps you need to take.
The central, regional and local contracting authorities in Hungary are ready to receive and process e-invoices.
There are no legal obligations, but all B2B and B2C transactions must be reported real-time to the Hungarian authorities, regardless off their amount. This applies to all businesses registered in Hungary for VAT purposes - including non-resident ones - and for transactions that have Hungary as place of supply.
The Hungarian National Tax and Customs Administration (NAV) has established the central platform Online Invoicing System (OSA) to enable real-time eInvoice reporting. All taxpayers must use OSA to send their e-invoices to the government.
There are no requirements for e-invoice formats in Hungary. You can use any type, from Peppol to email or PDF.
A platform like Billit is an official Peppol Access Point and connects directly to the Hungarian Online Invoice System (OSA). This means you can safely send your e-invoices to the Hungarian government and to your customers. You can also receive e-invoices in the same platform.
Registering on the Peppol network and sending your first e-invoice only takes a few minutes.
If you want to send or receive e-invoices from Hungary, you need to connect to OSA.
Follow the steps below to register on OSA via Billit and send your first invoice.
In order to send your first Hungarian invoice, you need to connect to OSA.
Please note: you will need to send your invoice twice: once to the Hungarian government via OSA (tax information) and once to the customer (invoice)
Peppol is a secure and closed network with many advantages:
The identity of everyone affiliated with the network is verified, so you can be sure that the invoices you receive are genuine, and you avoid invoice fraud.
The invoices you send through the network are completely digital, so you can process them automatically in your invoicing software.
E-invoices in the UBL standard are automatically read correctly. This prevents human error during processing.
Linking to your bank account means that outgoing and incoming invoices are automatically matched and you get a better overview of your company's financial situation.
Peppol is fast: your recipient will receive your invoice within 10 minutes of sending it. Combined with automatic processing, this will save a lot of time.
Peppol is an open network for securely sending and receiving business documents such as invoices. It is designed to simplify the purchase-to-pay process between governments and suppliers. Peppol was developed by the European commission but is on its way to become a global standard.
There are many kinds of identifiers for sending invoices via Peppol. Find out the difference between each option below.
| Type | Description | Example |
|---|---|---|
| VAT (identification) number or VAT-id number | A unique identification number for entrepreneurs liable to VAT. It should be included on each invoice to customers. A Hungarian VAT number starts with HU, followed by 8 digits. | HU23748963 |
| CRN number (Company Registry Number) | A unique identification number for Hungarian companies. It consists of 10 digits. | 01-09-707490 |
