# Verifactu and SMEs: one more year of leeway is not the same as a solved problem

Source: https://iberfacil.es/en/noticias/verifactu-and-smes-one-more-year-of-leeway-is-not-the-same-as-a-solved-problem
Markdown: https://iberfacil.es/en/noticias/verifactu-and-smes-one-more-year-of-leeway-is-not-the-same-as-a-solved-problem.md

The second postponement of Verifactu has been received with relief in almost all firms and in almost all SMEs. The relief is understandable and, in part, deserved: changing the program you use for invoicing is not like changing your phone provider, and doing it in a rush in the middle of a financial year is the fastest way to end up issuing invoices incorrectly. An extra year of leeway avoids that. What it does not avoid is everything else.

### THE COST DOES NOT DISAPPEAR, IT IS POSTPONED

The obligation will come all the same: 1 January 2027 for Corporate Tax payers and 1 July 2027 for the rest. Anyone who invoices with a spreadsheet, with an old unsupported program or with an in-house development made ten years ago will have to replace it or hire someone to adapt it. No specific deduction offsets that expense, and for a business of two or three people it is not negligible.

There is also an invisible cost that almost nobody accounts for: time. Migrating a history of clients, invoicing series and invoice formats consumes weeks of the time of the person who also has to attend to customers. In a large company that is done by a department. In an SME it is done by the owner, at night.

### THE RISK IS POORLY DISTRIBUTED

What worries me most is the allocation of responsibilities. Article 201 bis of the General Tax Law imposes a penalty of 50,000 euros per year for the mere possession of a non-compliant system, and 150,000 euros for the manufacture or marketing of such systems. The first fine is paid by the user; the second, by the manufacturer. The problem is that compliance is determined by the design of the program, not by the user, who has no reasonable way of auditing a binary.

The responsible declaration that the regulation requires from the producer is the mechanism intended to resolve this, and it is advisable to request it and file it. But a responsible declaration is not a certificate issued by the Administration: if the program turns out not to comply, the business owner will have to argue their diligence in a sanctioning procedure that starts with a five-figure amount on the table.

### WHAT IT WOULD BE REASONABLE TO ASK FOR

I do not dispute the goal. An unalterable and traceable invoicing record is a legitimate tool against fraud, and those who invoice everything they collect have nothing to fear from it. I dispute the proportionality. Three things would make this transition much less burdensome without touching the substance of the regulation: a public and searchable registry of programs declared compliant, so that the business owner can check in thirty seconds what they are using; a real gradation of the penalty for possession, which today is a fixed fine identical for a two-hundred-employee consulting firm and for a hairdresser; and an initial support period in which the first incident is corrected instead of punished.

My practical recommendation for the coming months is the opposite of what the postponement invites: do not wait. Request the declaration of conformity from the provider now, set a migration date before the summer of 2027 and test issuing in parallel. The leeway exists precisely to use it calmly, not to waste it.