Robert Müller-Török, Christoph Schmidt

• According to recent legislation e-invoices will, with some time lag, be mandatory for B2B transactions in Germany from January 1, 2025. Such e-invoices must, above all, fulfill three major requirements: the issuer of the e-invoice must be identified and authenticated, eg. by means of a qualified electronic signature or by uploading it via a trusted (government) portal with an eID of the eIDAS level of assurance of at least substantial, better high (1), the invoice itself must reproducible not have been altered, which can also be assured by a qualified or advanced electronic signature (2) and finally the provisions of the GDPR must be obeyed due during the B2B-invoice transfer from the issuing “B” to the receiving “B” (3). In addition, it would make sense if the financial authorities obtain automatically a machine-readable copy of each invoice issued for purposes of taxation and auditing (4). The paper deals with these three requirements and analyses whether and how they are fulfilled by the intended German legislation and, if applicable, the provided system by the financial authorities.