With the objective of minimizing fraud and tax evasion, the portuguese government as issued the Order N.º 412 / 2020.XXII, of the 23rd. October,  where it is determined that companies and taxable persons must introduce a two-dimensional bar code (QR code) in all invoices and other relevant tax documents, as from 1 January 2021. The QR code will include basic information of each document issued by the Tax Authority certified billing programs, namely the identification of the stakeholders, the type of document, date, the ATCUD (when it comes into force), the taxable bases, VAT rates and VAT paid , certificate number, and others.

ATCUD is a code consisting of 8 characters, separated by the character “-“, followed by the serial number of the document in question, which serves to identify the documents issued by each billing system (means of processing), series of documents and equipment and / or establishment used and communicated to the Tax Authority. For each communication of the billing series (and for each billing establishment), a series validation code is created to be validated by the Tax Authority, which will be part of the ATCUD. All invoices and other relevant tax documents issued in Portugal must  have the ATCUD code as of January 1, 2022.

Victor Ladeiro, Auren Portugal

victor.ladeiro@auren.pt