To reduce tax fraud, governments encourage automated accounts
SANTO DOMINGO square in downtown Mexico City is a colonial jewel where old-fashioned scribes write letters for the illiterate. Until a few weeks ago, it was also a place where unscrupulous vendors created fake invoices for tax-dodgers. But Mexico’s pioneering move, as of April 1st, to force the whole country to adopt electronic invoicing has killed the racket stone dead. “The government has taken our business from us,” mourns the owner of an idle printing press.
Neither tax collection nor technology is an area in which one would expect Latin America to be a global trendsetter. But when it comes to mandatory e-invoicing—that is, forcing buyers and sellers to register invoices with the tax authorities electronically when a transaction takes place—the region is blazing a trail that others, from the European Union to China, are considering following.
About a decade ago, Chile pioneered e-invoices, though they were optional and mai
