Global Daily Tax News, Germany To Permit E-Invoicing In All EU Languages, (Sep 26, 2025)

Germany's Federal Ministry of Finance has announced that German electronic invoices may feature any of the EU official languages.

Confirming the concession, the Ministry released a table of official translations of key terms required to be included in electronic invoices under German law – namely:

• self-billing;

• reverse charge;

• margin scheme - travel agents;

• margin scheme - second-hand goods;

• margin scheme - works of art; and

• margin scheme - collector's item and antiques.

Under Germany's electronic invoicing framework, invoices must conform with the European eInvoicing standard and they must be machine readable. A different format may be agreed between issuer and recipient, providing the format allows for the correct and complete extraction of the information required by the Value Added Tax Act (UStG) from the e-invoice into a format that complies with or is interoperable with the EN 16931 standard. An invoice provided in PDF format is not considered an electronic invoice.

Germany introduced a requirement on German taxable persons to accept electronic invoices for domestic supplies from January 1, 2025. The requirement to issue electronic invoices will be introduced only from 2027, and transitional rules provide that invoices may be submitted other than in electronic format until the end of 2026.

Taxpayers whose turnover was not greater than EUR800,000 in the previous year will be allowed to comply with the requirements starting from January 1, 2028.