It’s really not that complicated or expensive. Broken down for most people it’s gonna work just like email. What’s your grievance besides the general stuff in your post?
My current invoicing system is a simple tool that generates PDFs. I send those to my customers by email (and rarely an angry reminder by post), and I get paid. Good stuff. My suppliers similarly send me PDFs by mail, and some of them send me paper invoices by post. All very simple. I pay them every month, and once every quarter I send those on to my accountant so he can do his thing.
All this sending and receiving has been free so far. But with PEPPOL, I'll suddenly need some third party tool with some kind of paid subscription, to continue to do what I had been doing for free before.
Even if you "share" a certificate with others, this seems like an unwanted income tax for freelancers or businesses.
1,800 euro annual fee for freelancers:
Most businesses will use a accounting system anyway, and most of those will support Peppol out-of-the-box. So instead (or in addition) to sending an e-mail, the invoice will be sent directly into their accounting system (and their bank, if they choose).
Really, it simplifies things a lot! No more punching/copying of stuff from PDFs into your online bank. The cost is not really high, just a bit annoying (typically some euros a month + a few euros pr invoice).
(I probably could have found a cheaper provider but I don't send many invoices so it is ok).
Can you share what the cost is? This [0] provider says each invoice costs $10-30. NET14 means you'd pay $260 - $780/yr!
https://www.valtatech.com/thought-leadership/einvoicing/how-...
Imagine if you're a full time worker (like a freelancer!) and you have to pay a transaction tax to get your wages.
It’s also not a tax, as there is no entrenched monopoly that collects is. If anything, something like AWS or for my sensibilities azure is more outrageous.
Can Freelancers choose to another service (like email) instead of PEPPOL? According to the post, this service is the monopoly service provider per-law.
In the USA, a client can send me money for free via ACH or as a check (which are mostly free depending on your bank and account level).
Nobody stops you from running something similar to letsencrypt but for this PEPPOL thingy if you don't want to pay for invoicing software as service.
I for once, spent 10 years of my life maintaining an opensource library so people can cryptographically sign tax documents for Ukrainian government, including e-receipts on point of sale terminals.
I pay approx €80 a month for a complete accounting/payment system, including Peppol-access, payrolls, expenses etc etc .
I actually think Peppol-invoices are free. I just choose that instead of e-mail (assuming my customer is an official company).
It is automatically transferring the invoice-data to my bank which is expensive (and that too I can fix by changing bank...)
So, all in all, Peppol is a good thing. Making it mandatory is perhaps a bit over the top, but hey.