Large taxpayers and exporters covered under BIR Revenue Memorandum Order No. 24-2024 must be transmitting e-invoices through the BIR EIS by December 31, 2026. Capsure captures the required data fields from invoices at the point of receipt — offline, no internet needed. After sync, your accounting team reviews and prepares EIS-compliant export in the portal.
What Is the EOPT Act?
The Ease of Paying Taxes (EOPT) Act (Republic Act No. 11976), signed into law on January 5, 2024, is the most significant reform to the Philippine tax administration system in decades. Its core purpose is to make paying taxes easier — by simplifying invoicing rules, expanding digital filing options, and reducing penalties for honest mistakes.
For businesses on the expense side, the most immediately practical change under the EOPT Act is the replacement of the Official Receipt with the VAT Sales Invoice as the primary VAT documentation for purchases of services. This was previously a significant source of confusion: the Official Receipt was required for service transactions while the Sales Invoice was used for goods, creating a two-document system that tripped up both buyers and sellers.
What Happened to the Official Receipt?
The Official Receipt (OR) has not been entirely abolished — it still exists as an acknowledgment document for non-VATable transactions. However, for the purpose of substantiating input VAT deductions, the VAT Sales Invoice is now the required document for both goods and services.
This matters for your expense management workflow: if your suppliers are still issuing Official Receipts for services, those receipts may not be sufficient to support your input VAT claim. Under EOPT rules effective January 2024, you should be requesting VAT Sales Invoices for all taxable purchases.
Official Receipt vs. VAT Sales Invoice: What Changed
| Aspect | Before EOPT (Official Receipt) | After EOPT (VAT Sales Invoice) |
|---|---|---|
| Primary VAT document for services | Official Receipt (OR) | VAT Sales Invoice |
| Primary VAT document for goods | Sales Invoice | VAT Sales Invoice (unified) |
| Input VAT claim supported by | OR for services, Invoice for goods | VAT Sales Invoice for both |
| Document required from supplier | Different by transaction type | Always VAT Sales Invoice |
| BIR registration number required | TIN | TIN (now prominently validated) |
| Electronic invoicing mandate | Pilot only (RMO 12-2022) | EIS Phase 1 by Dec 31, 2026 |
BIR Electronic Invoicing System (EIS)
The BIR EIS is the Bureau's electronic invoicing platform, mandating that covered taxpayers transmit invoice data to the BIR in real time (or near real time) at the point of issuing an invoice. The system is modelled on similar real-time e-invoicing mandates in Mexico (CFDI), Italy (Sistema di Interscambio), and South Korea (e-Tax Invoice).
Who Is Covered Under Phase 1?
BIR Revenue Memorandum Order No. 24-2024 identifies the following taxpayers as covered under Phase 1 of the mandatory EIS rollout (deadline: December 31, 2026):
- Large taxpayers registered with the BIR Large Taxpayer Service (LTS)
- Exporters claiming VAT zero-rating on their export sales
- PEZA-registered enterprises and other economic zone locators
- Taxpayers specifically notified by the BIR regional office
Small and medium businesses not in the above categories are not immediately covered under Phase 1, but should prepare for subsequent phases that are expected to bring broader coverage progressively from 2027 onwards.
What EIS Transmission Requires
The BIR EIS requires covered taxpayers to transmit the following data for each invoice issued:
- Seller TIN and business name
- Buyer TIN and business name (for VAT-registered buyers)
- Invoice date and series number
- Description, quantity, and unit price of goods or services
- VAT amount (12% standard rate, or 0% for exports)
- Total invoice amount (VAT-inclusive)
- For exempt transactions: basis of exemption
When you photograph a Philippine VAT Sales Invoice with Capsure, the on-device OCR extracts: seller TIN, invoice number, date, line items with amounts, VAT breakdown, and total. No internet required at point of capture. After sync, these fields appear in your accounting portal where your team maps them to the BIR EIS data schema and confirms before export.
The Philippine Tax Reform Timeline for Businesses
What Businesses Should Do Now
Whether you are a covered taxpayer under Phase 1 or not, the EOPT Act and EIS mandate change how you should be managing receipts and invoices from January 2024 onwards:
- Start requesting VAT Sales Invoices from service providers. If your accountant, consultant, contractor, or cleaning service is still issuing Official Receipts, ask them to switch to VAT Sales Invoices. For VAT-registered buyers, the OR is no longer the preferred document for input VAT substantiation.
- Validate supplier TINs on invoices. The EOPT reforms emphasise TIN verification as a foundational element of e-invoicing compliance. An invoice with an incorrect or missing TIN does not support your input VAT claim.
- If you are a large taxpayer or exporter, register with BIR EIS immediately. The December 31, 2026 deadline for Phase 1 is firm. EIS registration, system integration, and test transmissions take months — do not wait until Q4 2026.
- Update your expense capture workflow to extract and retain the data fields required by EIS: TIN, invoice number, date, line items, VAT amount, total. Manually re-entering this from paper invoices is neither scalable nor sustainable.
Capsure's OCR parser is trained on Philippine VAT Sales Invoice formats — extracting TIN, invoice number, BIR Permit number, VAT breakdown, and total at point of scan. The export output maps to the BIR EIS data schema. Works offline, on Android, without a Play Store account. Free for personal use.