Registered businesses in Egypt issue their sales invoices, credit notes and debit notes as e-invoices sent to the Egyptian Tax Authority (ETA). Every document goes through the same four steps.
The four steps of one invoice
- Laid out as the ETA expects — item codes, tax types, your tax registration number and the issuing branch, and the buyer: a business, a person or a foreign buyer, with a registration number where there is one.
- Signed with your certificate — the document is reduced to a canonical form, hashed with SHA-256 and signed as CAdES-BES with your registered certificate, kept on a USB token or an HSM.
- Submitted to the ETA — its identity service admits your registered system, and its e-invoicing API receives and validates the document.
- Answered in stages — a quick first answer returns a submission ID and a UUID for each document taken in; the full validation follows, and a valid document can then be retrieved by your buyer.
When a document is rejected
The ETA returns the reason for each failed check. The document is corrected where it was issued and sent again. Most rejections come from item codes and tax codes that do not match what is registered for your company.
Correcting a valid invoice
The issuer can cancel, and the buyer can reject, a valid document only within a time window the ETA sets for each document type. After that window, the correction is a credit note or a debit note linked to the original.
Retail receipts
Sales recorded as retail receipts go to the ETA e-receipt system instead, so the receipt your customer takes carries its ETA reference.