"We are presenting a modern, efficient system, which has been agreed with the national business community, which meets all the requirements of tax control of other countries and ours, but also becomes efficient, fast and agile to help companies to control their operations and take care of their finances and the tax administration to verify the behavior of all taxpayers", explained the minister of Finance, Alejandro Zelaya, during the launch of this system.

The development of this tool has counted with the collaboration of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), through the Program for the Strengthening of the Tax Administration, which made available an investment of more than US$6 million for this purpose.

The minister of Finance indicated that this tool will allow to deepen the efforts to combat tax evasion and improve tax collection that have been implemented under the Central Government administration, which are already having favorable results.

"We have had perhaps one of the best results in the history of anti-evasion plans in Latin America. We are positioned as the country that collects the most with respect to its Gross Domestic Product, above countries such as Uruguay, Chile and others that historically have had this position", he said.

The Electronic Invoicing System will allow moving the physical structure of the documents issued in tax operations to a functional electronic system, which has the same legal backing as the physical documents, making it easier for companies to comply with their obligations with the tax authorities, reducing the costs of authorization, issuance and storage of documents; it will also allow improving the cross-referencing of information and the tax administration's auditing processes.

"We are taking a giant step forward in the region", said the minister of Finance regarding the launching of this system, while criticizing the fact that the initiative was not taken up by previous government administrations.

The IDB representative in El Salvador, César Falconi, agreed with minister Zelaya. "El Salvador is a pioneer country in developing, in record time, in the middle of the pandemic, and with 100% of salvadoran personnel, this strategic tool that will facilitate tax compliance", he remarked.

"The electronic invoice is considered as an instrument of fiscal transparency of the fourth industrial revolution, the spearhead of the advance of digitalization in tax administration, because it contributes to improve collection, reduce evasion and improve internal control at a lower cost" , said Falconi, detailing that, according to an IDB study, this tool contributes to increase tax collection by up to 6%.

Translated by: A.M