Regulatory updates - Paraguay

According to the regulation, newly registered legal entities in the Single Taxpayer Registry (RUC) are mandated to use electronic invoices ("E-Kuatia" or "E-Kuatia'i") exclusively for invoicing purposes.

With the enforcement of this mandate, DNIT will cease the issuance of “timbrados*” for new legal entities through any other means besides electronic invoices.

This requirement does not extend to the issuance of the Virtual Retention Voucher, offering an exception within the framework of the new taxpayer category introduced by the resolution.

The effective commencement date for the new obligation is 1 January 2025.

* “Timbrado” is a process of intervention by the Tax Administration prior to the printing of documents that have tax effects, such as invoices.

As previously mentioned by Pagero, companies that initially were part of the SIFEN e-invoicing pilot program had to start issuing e-invoices on a mandatory basis no later than 1 April 2022.

With the new General Resolution 105, the Paraguayan Tax Authority (SET) has established a roadmap for other businesses to comply with the SIFEN e-invoicing regime.

The implementation will start on 1 July 2022. Selected companies in Paraguay will have to join the e-invoicing regime during different phases until October 2024.

Furthermore, as of 1 January 2024, every new registered business in Paraguay will only be able to issue invoices electronically, being obliged to join the SIFEN regime right from the start.

The lists of the businesses that will have to switch to e-invoicing can be found on the Ekuatia website. In addition, taxpayer groups in scope will be notified by the SET via Marandu Tax Mailbox.

The government of Paraguay has released General Resolution No. 95 to extend the number of taxpayers that need to issue electronic invoices under the SIFEN (Sp.: Sistema Integrado de Facturación Electrónica Nacional) regime.

The companies that took part in the pilot program and those allowed to implement e-invoicing voluntarily will have to join the SIFEN regime and start issuing e-invoices on a mandatory basis. The timeline is as follows:

• 1 January 2022 for 14 companies that were part of the initial pilot (see the complete list);
• 1 April 2022 for the remaining 246 companies (see the complete list).

As to the rest of the taxpayers, they will be able to join the e-invoicing regime on a voluntary basis, as long as they fulfil the requirements set by the Tax Administration SET.

The government has announced a new General resolution Nº74 to give businesses the opportunity to implement the technical requirements for e-invoicing. More than 200 companies are already participating in the program to adapt to e-invoices, even though it is not mandatory yet.

Project stages

Since its launch, the SIFEN project has been divided into the following three stages:

1. Pilot Plan: 14 local companies started in the pilot plan in 2018 and they were the first to issue e-invoices.

2. Voluntary adhesion: After submitting an application to the Tax Authority, companies will be able to join the program and start issuing e-invoices on a voluntary basis.

3. Generalisation: The goal is all taxpayers issuing e-invoices. The Tax Authority will continuously select companies and include them in SIFEN, gradually increasing the number of businesses that send and receive e-invoices.

The E-KUATIA tool

Following the second stage of the implementation, the Paraguayan tax authority has released a new free e-invoicing tool called E-KUATIA to enable taxpayers the issuance and delivery of electronic fiscal documents.

Taxpayers willing to use the e-Kuatia platform have to notify SIFEN and fulfil the requirements for the issuance and reception of e-invoices.

On the official E-KUATIA website, you will find more information about the pilot programme, such as reports, statistics about the companies registered and types of electronic documents transferred via the platform.