Regulatory updates - China

On September 8, the Chinese Government published an announcement confirming the full transition to electronic invoices for national electronic railway passenger tickets from October 1, 2025.  

This follows a transition period between November 2024 and September 30, when both paper reimbursement vouchers and electronic invoices have been used in parallel.  

Electronic passenger railway tickets have been fully implemented since 2020.  

The legislation, published on May 19, 2025, introduces and outlines standardized processes for handling financial and accounting data in electronic vouchers. The electronic vouchers supported include:

• VAT e-invoices;
• E-receipts;
• Transportation tickets;
• Fiscal electronic bills, and more.

The vouchers must be in structured formats such as XML (Extensible Markup Language) and XBRL (Extensible Business Reporting Language), allowing for automated processing, which entails that the data must be received, recorded, reimbursed, and archived without the need for conversion.

The e-vouchers intend to replace historic paper-based practices by having ERP compatibility with the structured data, preserving the integrity and authenticity of data, and ultimately reducing administrative burdens associated with manual processes.

Taxpayers with existing accounting software or ERP systems and accounting software or ERP vendors are required to upgrade these systems within three years of the effective date of the notice to meet the requirements of the electronic voucher data standards. 

Following the Pilot Program, which was gradually expanded to the whole country from 1 December 2021, the STA decided to officially promote e-fapiao invoices countrywide. Therefore, as of 1 December 2024, all taxpayers, not only the selected or newly registered ones, will be allowed to issue e-fapiao.

Prior to that, the STA announced the promotion of fully digitalized e-fapiao for civil aviation passenger transport services, which will also take place from 1 December 2024. Companies in the air transport sector will be allowed to issue e-fapiao for passengers using domestic transport services.

According to the STA announcement, digital invoices are classified as e-invoices and are legally equivalent to paper invoices. Moreover, to allow taxpayers to issue and manage e-fapiao smoothly, the STA will provide a platform for e-invoice services available nationwide.