Mandatory e-invoicing in the Netherlands, planned for 2030: what to do now

Mandatory e-invoicing is on its way to the Netherlands. In a letter to parliament of 11 September 2026, the Dutch government announced its plan to require structured e-invoices for all invoices between businesses from 1 July 2030, and digital reporting of invoice data to the tax office (Belastingdienst) from 1 July 2031. The draft bill is due for public consultation this autumn.

Treat those dates as a target, not a certainty. There is no law yet, and timelines like this often shift: France, for example, postponed its own B2B e-invoicing mandate more than once. Whether the date holds or moves, the choices you make about invoicing software in the next year or two decide how much work the switch will be.

What the government plans

The plan follows from the EU directive VAT in the Digital Age (ViDA), adopted in March 2025. ViDA makes e-invoicing and per-transaction reporting mandatory for cross-border B2B trade within the EU from 1 July 2030, and lets member states apply the same system to domestic trade. The Netherlands intends to do that. The cross-border part rests on EU law that is already adopted; the domestic part depends on the Dutch bill.

Planned from	What changes
1 July 2030	B2B invoices within the Netherlands and to other EU countries must be e-invoices
1 July 2030	Cross-border EU sales and purchases are reported to the Belastingdienst per invoice
1 July 2031	A selection of fields from domestic B2B e-invoices is reported to the Belastingdienst

For cross-border sales the letter lists two more changes. You must issue the invoice within 10 days of the delivery or service. And the invoice data goes to the tax office at the moment you issue it, invoice by invoice, instead of the current monthly or quarterly ICP return with totals.

There is one exemption. Businesses in the small business scheme (KOR), with a turnover of up to €20,000 a year, don’t have to send domestic e-invoices, according to the government. There is no separate threshold for other micro-businesses, and the government wants to add as few new exceptions as possible.

What counts as an e-invoice

The letter names one standard: the European norm EN 16931, and no other format for domestic invoices. An EN 16931 invoice is a data file that accounting software reads without a person retyping anything: supplier, customer, VAT numbers, lines, rates and totals in fixed fields. A PDF sent by email is a picture of an invoice. It doesn’t meet the norm, so once the obligation applies it no longer counts for B2B invoices.

That is also where the benefit sits. The letter cites EY’s research: independent analyses show 55 to 70 percent lower cost per invoice compared with paper processes, and international benchmarks of about €5 to €6 saved per invoice sent and €8 per invoice received. The receiving side gains most, because booking and checking an incoming invoice is the part that takes people’s time.

What is still open

Three things are not settled yet:

1. The network. EY advised making Peppol mandatory between businesses. The Dutch central government already requires Peppol for invoices it receives. The government also wants to look at the European Business Wallet, which is still being developed, and wrote that the subject was not ready for a decision. It planned further research until October 2026.
2. The law itself. This is a policy letter, not legislation. The bill goes to consultation this autumn, should reach parliament before the 2027 summer recess, and the aim is to finish the parliamentary process before 1 July 2028. Until parliament passes the law, the dates in this article are plans, and they can still move.
3. Costs for businesses. Sira Consulting is mapping administrative burden, costs and benefits for different types of businesses, and an SME test will follow.

Your neighbours are ahead

The Netherlands is not first. The letter names France, Belgium, Germany, Poland and Italy as countries choosing similar reporting rules. Belgium has required structured e-invoices between Belgian VAT-registered businesses since 1 January 2026. If you have customers in Belgium or Germany, check now whether their rules already affect your invoices; you may not have to wait until 2030.

What to do now

1. Find out where your invoices come from. Accounting package, webshop, CRM, Stripe, or your own platform. Ask each vendor whether it can send and receive EN 16931 invoices, and whether it supports Peppol.
2. If you invoice from your own software, plan the change now. Generating a valid EN 16931 file is not hard, but every edge case (credit notes, discounts, mixed VAT rates, foreign customers) has to come out right, and the file must pass validation.
3. Clean your master data. Per-invoice reporting makes errors visible quickly. Check VAT numbers, addresses and the VAT rate on every product or service.
4. Look at your cross-border invoicing rhythm. The 10-day deadline for EU sales applies from July 2030.
5. Plan for incoming e-invoices. The biggest saving is in automatic booking of what you receive. Ask your bookkeeper or accounting package how they will handle that.
6. Follow the consultation. Once it opens on internetconsultatie.nl, anyone can respond. That is where the choice of network will be argued.

This is not tax advice. Check with your accountant or tax adviser how the final rules apply to you.

How we approach this

We built evoicely because business customers in Germany and Belgium must receive structured e-invoices. It turns each finalised Stripe invoice into the right e-invoice, checks it against the official validator and sends it. Once the Dutch obligation takes effect, evoicely will support Dutch e-invoices as well. The lesson from that work applies to any invoicing system: test against the official validator early, with your strangest invoices, not your simplest. If your invoicing runs in a system built for you, see custom web applications.