The Inland Revenue Department (IRD) says the revised Value Added Tax invoice format will become mandatory from October 1, 2026, and has issued an Extraordinary Gazette notification covering its implementation.
The format was originally due to take effect on July 1. That date was pushed back to give businesses and taxpayers a grace period to prepare their systems.
Why it was deferred
The IRD said businesses had asked for more time to update their accounting and billing software to meet the new requirements. Taking those requests into account, the department has instructed companies to ensure their accounting and invoicing systems comply with the specified requirements before the October 1 deadline.
The revised format was introduced on March 27 as part of an effort to streamline digital tax collection and improve transparency in the tax system.
What the department says it will fix
According to the IRD, the new system is intended to “prevent the use of fraudulent invoices, enable timely monitoring of transactions, and minimize tax leakage.”
Standardising invoice data is a building block for the department’s wider digital tax agenda, giving it machine-readable records it can match against filed returns rather than relying on documents in varying formats.
The practical burden falls on VAT-registered businesses, which have roughly six weeks from this announcement to reconfigure billing and accounting software. Firms that run older or heavily customised systems face the most work, and the department has given no indication that the October 1 date will move again.
Source: Ada Derana.
