E-Invoice Guideline 2023

Further to the announcement of the Government’s implementation of electronic invoicing in 2024, the Inland Revenue Board (“IRB”) issued the e-Invoice Guideline 2023 on 21 July 2023 to enable instant/nearly instant validation and storage of transactions, catering to Business-to-Business (“B2B”), Business-to-Customer (“B2C”) and Business-to-Government (“B2G”). The implementation of e-Invoice will not only provide seamless experience to taxpayers but also improve the business efficiency and increases tax compliance.

Implementation timeline

The e-Invoice will be implemented in phases, based on the turnover or revenue thresholds of business as follows:

1 June 2024	1 January 2025	1 January 2026	1 January 2027
Mandatory implementation for taxpayers with an annual turnover or revenue in excess of RM 100 million	Mandatory implementation for taxpayers with an annual turnover or revenue in excess of RM 50 million and up to RM 100 million	Mandatory implementation for taxpayers with an annual turnover or revenue in excess of RM 25 million and up to RM 50 million	Mandatory implementation for all taxpayers and certain non-business transactions
Implementation on a voluntary basis for taxpayers regardless of their annual turnover or revenue

Transmission mechanisms

To facilitate taxpayer’s transition to e-invoice, the IRB has developed two distinct e-invoice transmission mechanisms:

A portal (MyInvois Portal) hosted by the IRB that enables individual generation through a comprehensive form and the option for batch generation through spreadsheet upload for processing multiple transactions; and
An Application Programming Interface (“API”) that enables businesses to conveniently transmit a high volume of transactions.

Taxpayers can select the most suitable mechanism to transmit e-invoices to the IRB, based on their specific needs and business requirements.

Assessing readiness for e-Invoicing

To ensure that businesses are ready for the implementation of e-Invoicing, below are a few key steps that can be carried out to assess the readiness and standardisation:

Allocate and equip personnel with the necessary capabilities to adopt and oversee the implementation of e-Invoicing;
Determine availability of data sources and structure, current IT capabilities to support system readiness and processes to comply with e-invoice requirements and obligations; and
Review current processes in issuing transaction documents (i.e. invoice, debit note, credit note, refund).