Continuing with our Latin American trading partner theme, today’s focus will be on Argentina. You can read about the various invoicing requirements and guidelines for Mexico and Brazil in previous articles.
The tax authority responsible for overseeing electronic invoices in Argentina is called Administración Federal de Ingresos Públicos (AFIP). In order to issue invoices, all companies in Argentina must obtain a digital certificate and register it with the AFIP. In order to do this, however, the company must first request a CFD (Certificado Fiscal Digital or Fiscal Key) which enables the creation of an account with the AFIP (an online account). This process ensures that the digital certificate issued to a company is linked to that company’s tax identification number (called a CUIT in Argentina).
Now, once a company has gone through the above, it is ready to issue an eInvoice. To start, each invoice must receive authorization from the AFIP before being submitted to the customer. The authorization comes in the form of a code called a CAE (or Código de Autorización de Impresión, electronic authorization code). This process applies to various types of invoices or documents (credit or debit memos), export invoices are Type E while domestic invoices are Type A or B. The type of invoice depends on the tax ID (CUIT or DNI) entered in your AFIP account.
- You’ll get a type A invoice if you entered a valid CUIT for a VAT-registered company.
- You’ll get a type B invoice if a DNI (national identification number for individuals) number was entered.
The CAE code can be obtained in two ways:
- Each time an invoice is submitted
- The company can ask for a certain number of CAE Codes for use within a 15 day period. After this period, the company has to file a report on how many of those codes were really used and more can be requested.
Other Things to Note
- Multiple CFD Document Types (export invoice, credit memo, debit memo, etc.)
- Official document codes must be issued in sequence, so if there is a problem with one particular document the remainder must be placed on hold
- Real time integration of CFD Summary with Argentina Tax Authority (AFIP) is required
- For all invoices the CAE Code and Expiration Date must be on the printed document
- For export invoices, the truck cannot be released without a CAE Code
