The Tax Directorate surrounds evaders by creating an effective and secure electronic invoicing system

The General Directorate of Taxes launched a request for offers to supply an electronic invoicing system, in a new step aimed at combating the phenomenon of tampering with invoices and exploiting them in tax evasion and evasion operations. The financial value of the new deal amounted to 6 million and 480 thousand dirhams, or about 650 million centimes. The new system will seek to equip accountants and banks with special accounts, in order to process and circulate the payment of invoices via the Internet.

The request for proposals aims to create an effective and secure electronic invoicing system in order to simplify, accelerate and secure the collection of tax data. It also aims to enhance transparency, confidentiality and track commercial transactions in order to contain attempts at tax evasion and illegal practices. The new system must respond to several key functional requirements, especially managing user access, creating different profiles for taxpayers and the tax administration, while ensuring the security and confidentiality of data.

The new electronic invoicing system must facilitate the submission and confirmation of invoices electronically, by ensuring compliance with applicable tax standards and integrating a mechanism for tracking transactions, in order to enable concerned parties to follow the status of submitted invoices, on the basis of adding reporting and analytics features as well, with the aim of enabling the fiscal administration to Analyze tax trends and detect any potential anomalies or manipulation.

Electronic invoicing boils down to sending the seller, whether a company, institution, or group, invoices or receipts via the Internet. Then the customer pays the amount due electronically, as this method replaces the traditional method that relies on sending paper invoices and then paying through manual means, such as checks. Rapid review of invoices and reducing the costs involved in delivering paper documents are among the many advantages of this new type of billing, which requires the seller and customer to have information systems that accept this billing.

Mounir Al-Moustari, an expert in tax law and public finance, confirmed that electronic invoicing is an effective tool in combating tax evasion, as it allows every step in the sales process to be accurately documented, including the date of the transaction and details of the amount paid. This reduces the chances of tampering and forgery.

Al-Mistari explained, in a statement to Hespress, that this type of billing can interact directly with local tax systems, allowing for automated tax verification. This reduces the possibility of tax evasion and fraud, and facilitates audits.

The expert in tax law and public finance added that, thanks to electronic invoicing, tax control departments can easily access the data of taxpayers and their business operations. This makes it difficult for individuals or companies to distort data to evade paying tax dues.

The same spokesman stressed that the electronic system reduces errors when entering invoice data and increases the efficiency of operations. This contributes to limiting opportunities for tax evasion resulting from human errors, when manual processes are used to issue invoices.

It is noteworthy that adopting electronic invoicing will require a significant amount of time. This is in order to raise awareness of its importance and explain how to exploit it, then equip the actors, suppliers, customers, accountants, and banks with the necessary information infrastructure, and establish a transitional period for the shift from manual transactions with invoices to electronic channels, which would ensure more transparency in commercial and financial transactions, and reduce the opportunities for tax evasion incurred. The state treasury loses billions annually.