A report penned by Nationalist MEP David Casa on a European Commission proposal regarding new VAT rules on invoicing has been given the green light by the European Parliament with 599 votes in favour, 31 against and 5 abstentions.

This was the last hurdle related to this report as it had already been approved by Parliament's Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee.

The report on VAT rules on invoicing includes a number of innovative requirements and requests including that all SMEs in the EU should be given the option to use a cash accounting scheme. While this might not be the ideal option for all SMEs, giving these important organisations the flexibility to choose the accounting system that works best for them could be extremely beneficial.

On the other hand, the report disagrees with the Commission's proposal to use the European Central Bank daily exchange rate on invoices. Business organisations already have adequate systems in place and changing such systems would be unnecessarily burdensome. The requirement to have invoices translated into the various languages of the EU was also removed - on account of it being costly and impractical.

The report also ensures that electronic invoices should be placed on an equal footing with paper invoices and that the latter can be converted into electronic format for storage purposes. This again should reduce the storage space required by organisations to store their invoices as well as make administrative processes more efficient.