Latvia’s 2026 E-Invoice Mandate: Who Must Comply, and When

Latvia’s tax authority, the VID (Valsts ieņēmumu dienests, the State Revenue Service), requires structured e-invoice data for G2G, B2G and G2B transactions starting 1 January 2026. That covers invoicing between government bodies, between companies and government bodies, and between government bodies and companies. Ordinary B2B invoicing between two private companies stays voluntary until 1 January 2028. The obligation doesn’t depend on turnover or invoice value: the transitional provisions of the Accounting Law set the rule by transaction type and counterparty, not by amount.

Does the 2026 Mandate Actually Apply to Your Business?

The obligation reaches every company registered in Latvia, every sole trader carrying out economic activity, and other subjects covered by the Accounting Law and VAT Law. It isn’t limited to VAT-registered businesses. If you issue an invoice to a government body, a budget institution, or any other public-sector entity, that invoice has to be an e-invoice, and its data has to reach VID. None of this is actually new: issuing G2G/B2G/G2B e-invoices became mandatory on 1 January 2025, though contracts signed before 31 December 2024 ran under a transition period that lasted until the start of 2026. So if your customer is a public-sector body, the full obligation already applies now. The age of the contract doesn’t change that.

What Does VID Actually Accept as an E-Invoice?

Under the Accounting Law, a structured e-invoice is one created, sent and received in a machine-readable format that meets the European standard LVS EN 16931-1:2017. In practice, that means an XML file (a machine-readable data format) built to Latvia’s national structure and compatible with the UBL 2.1 and PEPPOL BIS Billing 3.0 specification. PEPPOL is the European standard for the e-invoice delivery network; UBL 2.1 is the international invoice data structure it runs on. A PDF, however tidy it looks, doesn’t count. VID doesn’t treat it as a structured invoice. VID also doesn’t keep any attachments sent alongside the invoice: only the XML file itself reaches the system and stays there, so every detail that matters (quantities, prices, payment terms) needs to live inside the invoice structure itself, not in a separate document.

How Does the Data Reach VID, and Which Path Requires Manual Work?

Data reaches VID through three channels, and the difference between them is who actually does the work.

• e-address (e-adrese): invoices sent through Latvija.gov.lv’s digital delivery channel, the national portal’s official electronic mailbox, reach VID automatically; you don’t submit anything separately.
• Operator: if you use an e-invoicing service provider, data reaches VID automatically only when the provider’s delivery channel is integrated with the VID API (an API, or application programming interface, is what lets software exchange data directly with VID’s systems). If your provider doesn’t support that integration, the submission work falls on you.
• Any other channel: if both parties exchange invoices by email, a direct system-to-system link, or some other arrangement, the XML file has to go to VID manually, either uploaded through EDS or sent via the EDS API.

In all three cases, the invoice itself still has to meet the same structured XML format. The channel only decides who delivers the data to VID.

How Do You Submit an E-Invoice Through EDS?

EDS (the Electronic Declaration System) is VID’s online portal, and you log in with secure authentication. The upload function is only visible to an authorised person: a company officer, or a representative with a valid, registered authorisation in VID’s system, as VID’s own guide to submitting through EDS explains. The steps themselves are simple:

1. Log in to EDS and open the “E-rēķini” section.
2. Upload the XML file (drag-and-drop works too); the maximum size per invoice is 20 MB.
3. The system automatically checks the file against PEPPOL, XML, XSD and Schematron validation rules, plus a virus scan.
4. Check the status: if the upload goes through, the invoice sits in VID’s register; if it fails, you’ll see the reason for rejection.

You can skip the manual login entirely if your accounting software is connected to the VID EDS API. To set that up, create an API certificate or key with “Dokumentu API” rights under the “Iestatījumi / API atslēgas” section inside EDS.

What Are the Submission Deadlines, and What Happens If There’s an Error?

An e-invoice has to be submitted to VID once, within five working days of the day it was sent, and once it has already reached VID through one channel (say, via e-address), the same invoice can’t be submitted again through another. That deadline and the ban on duplicate submission come from point 14 of Cabinet of Ministers Regulation No. 749 of 9 December 2025. If EDS rejects an uploaded file because it fails the PEPPOL, XML, XSD or Schematron checks, you fix the error and resubmit it in the same section. A rejected invoice doesn’t count as submitted until the corrected version has been accepted.

What Changes in 2028, and What Can You Start Using Today?

Ordinary B2B invoicing between companies becomes e-invoicing, with mandatory submission to VID, from 1 January 2028. Until then (from the start of 2026 through the end of 2027), submitting B2B data to VID stays voluntary. Companies that make the switch early get to learn the system without a hard deadline forcing their hand. One concrete reason to start sooner: from 25 May 2026, EDS will automatically pull incoming e-invoice data into Parts I and III of the PVN 1 VAT return annex. Pre-filling is optional; companies whose accounting software is already integrated will keep filing the way they always have. But for anyone still filling in VAT returns by hand, a large chunk of manual re-typing simply disappears.