Amendments in the real time invoice data service

HTA 2.0 – the new system can be tested

As you may have already heard, from 1 April 2020, all taxpayers, who are required to provide real-time invoice data, must switch to a new invoice reporting interface (HTA 2.0). Although the development documentation and schemes for the HTA 2.0 invoice reporting interface were already available on the official website of the Hungarian Tax Authority’s (“HTA”) Online Invoice System, the opportunity to test the new system was opened last week, on 15 October.

So there is quite a lot of time for testing. However, in the past, it has been found that many small changes to the real-time invoice service have taken several months to develop. For this reason, it is advisable not to leave testing at the last minute.

In any case, you do not have to worry about invoicing with an external service provider or purchasing an external invoicing program developed in Hungary, as the service provider or invoicing program developer will make the necessary improvements by 1 April. However, in their case, it might be worth checking out if the tests are going well.

Nonetheless, those taxpayers should be careful, whose invoicing program has been adapted by foreign developers to the HTA’s System, or when the Hungarian company uses the invoicing program of a foreign parent company (or company group), which will not be automatically updated. In such cases, it is definitely worthwhile to alert foreign programmers about the changes and possibly seek the help of a Hungarian IT consultant if any problems arise during the testing of the new system.

From 0:00 a.m. on 1 April 2020, reporting under the previous version (HTA 1.1) will no longer be possible. Due to the long preparation time available, after 1 April, HTA could fine taxpayers up to HUF 500,000 per incorrect data service (incorrect invoice).

We hope that our newsletter has provided you with useful information. Should you have any questions regarding to the new system, or its improvements and testing, we are happy to assist you also with HTA 2.0 and XML issues.