E-Rechnung Pflicht: the deadlines, the exceptions, the fine print

The obligation applies to invoices for taxable supplies between businesses (B2B) where both supplier and recipient are established in Germany, in the law’s words, inländische Unternehmer. Establishment means a registered office, management, or a participating permanent establishment in Germany. Invoices to consumers are out of scope, as are most cross-border invoices, though the EU’s ViDA framework will bring digital reporting for intra-EU B2B transactions from mid-2030.

Two roles, two duties. As a recipient, you have needed the capability to receive e-invoices since January 1, 2025; there is no threshold, no company-size exception, and the sender does not need your consent for a compliant e-invoice. As an issuer, your duty depends on the calendar and, in 2027, on your prior-year turnover.

The law and the BMF guidance exempt specific invoice types from the issuing duty:

• Small-value invoices (Kleinbetragsrechnungen). Invoices up to €250 gross (§ 33 UStDV) may continue as paper or any electronic format.
• Passenger transport tickets (Fahrausweise). Tickets that serve as invoices (§ 34 UStDV) are exempt.
• Tax-exempt supplies under § 4 Nr. 8 to 29 UStG. For example many financial, insurance, and real-estate transactions, and sectors like education and healthcare where the exemptions apply.
• B2C invoices. Invoices to private consumers are outside the mandate entirely.
• Kleinunternehmer as issuers. Small entrepreneurs under § 19 UStG are permanently exempt from issuing e-invoices (§ 34a UStDV, added by the Jahressteuergesetz 2024). They must still be able to receive them, the BMF states this explicitly.

Once the issuing duty applies, failing to issue a required invoice, or issuing it late, is an administrative offence when done intentionally or recklessly: § 26a Abs. 2 UStG, with a fine of up to €5,000 per violation. During the transition periods, sending a sonstige Rechnung with the recipient’s consent is not a violation.

The quieter risk sits on the receiving side. Tax practitioners point out that once an e-invoice is legally required for a transaction, accepting a non-compliant invoice instead can put the recipient’s input VAT deduction (Vorsteuerabzug) in question during an audit. The BMF’s published guidance softens this for the transition, and the debate is not fully settled, so treat it as a strong argument for clean intake processes rather than as a fixed rule. Request compliant invoices from suppliers once their duty applies, and document what you receive.

One more receiving-side detail from the BMF letter of October 15, 2025: for recurring invoices from continuing obligations (Dauerrechnungen), an initial e-invoice suffices as long as the underlying terms do not change, so do not expect a monthly XML for every rent or hosting contract.

• Every business, now. Confirm you can receive and read e-invoices: a monitored inbox, a viewer or parser for XRechnung XML and ZUGFeRD hybrids, and eight-year archiving that preserves the structured original.
• Issuers over €800,000 turnover. Have e-invoice issuance live by January 1, 2027: format chosen, software configured, customer master data (Leitweg-IDs for public-sector customers, email or Peppol endpoints for B2B) collected.
• Issuers at or under €800,000. Your hard deadline is January 1, 2028, but your larger customers may push for structured invoices earlier, and your suppliers can already send you e-invoices today.
• EDI users. Existing EDI keeps working with consent through 2027; from 2028 verify EN 16931 data extraction interoperability with your trading partners.
• Accounts payable teams. Plan for the mixed inflow: the transition guarantees years of paper, PDF, and structured formats arriving side by side. One extraction and validation layer for all of them beats three parallel processes.

Reading about formats is one thing; an accounts-payable inbox full of them is another. Two free resources and one production path:

• Peppol e-Invoice Extractor: pull the seller, buyer, line items, VAT breakdown, and totals out of an e-invoice, free in the browser
• Peppol e-invoice extraction guide: the EN 16931 field model (Business Terms) explained field by field
• Invoice parsing with schema validation: process XRechnung, ZUGFeRD, Peppol invoices, PDFs, and paper scans into one validated output schema, with confidence and provenance on every value