Invoice requirements in Luxembourg: what must be on every invoice

A Luxembourg invoice is compliant when it carries the nine mentions the tax authority enumerates: the dates, a sequential number, your VAT number, both parties in full, what you sold, and the amounts and the tax broken down by rate — plus the reason for any line you charge no VAT on.

For a business customer, issue it no later than the 15th day of the month following the month in which the goods were delivered or the service performed. Keep it for 10 years. The Administration de l'enregistrement, des domaines et de la TVA (AED) publishes the list as a closed enumeration rather than a principle, and the lines that hand the VAT to somebody else are where the money is.

The mentions list, the issuance deadlines and the simplified-invoice rules below were read in August 2026 on the AED's Que doivent contenir les factures guidance and guichet.lu's invoicing page. The rates, the franchise wording, the e-invoicing obligation and the retention periods carry their own official links at the point where they appear.

The mandatory mentions, one line at a time

The enumeration reads like bureaucracy and works like a checklist. It is worth walking a live template down it field by field, because the failures here are rarely conceptual — they are a field the template never had. The note after each item is what actually goes wrong, not a restatement of the text.

1. The issue date. The anchor for the deadlines and for the retention clock.
2. A unique sequential number identifying the invoice. Gaps and duplicates are the fastest way to make an auditor curious. Pick a scheme on day one and never freelance it — not for a cancelled job, not for a client who wants the number changed.
3. The VAT identification number under which you made the supply. Format: LU followed by a unique 8-digit group (intra-EU use); dealings with the AED use the 13-digit national matricule. If you are still waiting on it, that is a sequencing problem to fix before invoicing rather than after — see our guide to the déclaration initiale.
4. The full name and address of both supplier and customer. The test is whether a stranger reading the invoice can identify the exact legal entity that issued it and the exact one that owes payment. A trading name printed without the registered legal name behind it fails that test, and so does an address that identifies only a forwarding arrangement. A registered office held at a domiciliation agent is a different case entirely: that address is the company's registered office, and it is the one that belongs on the invoice.
5. The date of the supply, or of the advance payment, where it differs from the issue date. Most templates omit this field entirely; it matters whenever work spans a month end.
6. The quantity and nature of the goods, or the extent and nature of the services. "Consulting services" on a five-figure invoice is an invitation to questions from both the client's accountant and the AED.
7. The price excluding tax and the other taxable-base elements, broken down by rate. Discounts and charges that move the taxable base belong on the invoice rather than being quietly netted into a unit price.
8. The rates and the amount of tax due, broken down by rate. One line per rate, and a mixed invoice needs subtotals per rate, not a single blended figure.
9. The reason the transaction is not subject to tax, wherever you charge no VAT. This is the easiest item to skip, because an invoice with an empty VAT line looks finished without it — and it is the one with consequences.

Two things about the list catch people out. Item 3 is your VAT number, not the customer's: the AED requires the customer's identification number separately, for intra-Community supplies and for the cross-border services where the customer is the one liable for the tax.

And the enumeration covers VAT, not the whole invoice. The RCS number sits outside it because it comes from commercial law, which requires a registered company to state its legal form, its registered office and its registration number on the documents it issues.

That is an obligation in its own right rather than a stylistic choice, so an invoice carrying only the nine VAT mentions is still a block short. Where the activity runs on a business permit, the permit reference conventionally goes in the same place.

The VAT block: the rates, shown per rate

The rate you apply comes from what you sold, not from what your accounting software defaults to. These are the national rates in force in 2026, per the AED's taux nationaux applicables:

Because items 7 and 8 both say "broken down by rate", an invoice mixing two rates needs the net, the rate and the tax shown separately for each — a total-only invoice is a defective one even when the arithmetic is right.

The three lines that move the VAT to someone else

If a sentence on your invoice determines who accounts for the tax, that sentence is not decoration. Wrong wording can leave you liable for VAT you never collected, and the client's deduction can be denied on the same document.

Reverse charge. The mention the AED prescribes is the French word Autoliquidation. No official Luxembourg source we could verify authorises printing "Reverse charge" instead, which is what most English-language invoicing tools produce by default. Keep the French word on the invoice; adding an English gloss beside it costs nothing, replacing it does.

The VAT franchise. Small businesses under the franchise regime charge no VAT and must state the basis. The wording is TVA non applicable – Article 57bis de la loi modifiée du 12 février 1979, per the AED's SME franchise FAQ.

The regime applies below an annual turnover of €50,000, with a tolerance to €55,000, and franchise businesses declare the previous calendar year's turnover before 1 March each year. The regime also carries an invoicing allowance of its own: since 1 January 2025 a taxable person under the franchise regime may issue simplified invoices and may not show VAT on them.

The AED states that as a permission attached to the regime, with no amount attached to it — which makes it a different allowance from the €100 short form further down this page, not an instance of it. An invoice showing no VAT without any legal basis, meanwhile, reads as an error, because it is one.

Other exemptions. Anything else you invoice without VAT states the ground for it — item 9 of the enumeration doing its job. The AED accepts a reference to the relevant provision of the EU VAT Directive or of the Luxembourg VAT law, or any other mention showing the supply is exempt. "No VAT" on its own is not a reason.

When the invoice has to leave your office

Luxembourg sets an outer limit, and it differs by customer type:

The deadline is not cosmetic: the issue date pulls the transaction into a VAT period, and the return that picks it up follows the standard rhythm — monthly / quarterly returns due before the 15th of the month following the period, filed electronically via eCDF. Invoicing December work in February is how a first-year company ends up amending returns it has already filed.

Invoices up to €100: the short form

For small amounts the AED allows a simplified invoice carrying only the issue date; the name and address of the supplier of the goods or services; the quantity and nature of the goods or the extent and nature of the services; the price including tax; and the VAT payable or the data allowing it to be calculated.

This route is open to any taxable person and turns purely on the amount, which is what separates it from the franchise allowance above. Two conditions do the work here: the €100 ceiling is the gross amount including VAT, and the simplified form is unavailable where the invoice covers transactions involving another EU Member State. Cross-border sales get the full list regardless of size.

Selling to the public sector: a PDF is not an e-invoice

Since 18 March 2023, every economic operator sending an invoice or credit note to a contracting authority or contracting entity under a public procurement or concession contract must send it electronically in a structured format, through Peppol or MyGuichet.lu, per guichet.lu's e-invoicing procedure.

A PDF attached to an email is not that, whatever it contains. This is a tooling decision rather than a paperwork one: if public contracts are anywhere in your plan, pick invoicing software that emits a compliant structured e-invoice before you win the first tender, not during it.

Keeping them: 10 years

Issued and received invoices are kept for 10 years from the issue date, per the AED's obligations de l'assujetti, and the underlying accounting records for 10 years, in Luxembourg, on paper or electronically; in liquidation the books drop to 5 years.

The practical failure is never deletion, it is readability: an archive locked inside an invoicing tool you stopped paying for is not an archive. Export the year's set at each year end and keep it where the company, not the subscription, controls it.

Common questions

The questions that follow the mentions list are about wording and about undoing mistakes: which language the reverse-charge line takes, what a franchise business writes where the VAT amount would otherwise go, how to correct an invoice that has already been sent, and whether an emailed PDF counts as an invoice at all. Short answers below, in that order.

Do I write "Autoliquidation" or "Reverse charge"?

Write Autoliquidation. That is the mention the AED prescribes; the English phrase is what foreign templates print, and it is not the Luxembourg wording. Since this line decides who accounts for the tax, it is not the place to trust a software default.

What does a business under the VAT franchise put on its invoices?

The line TVA non applicable – Article 57bis de la loi modifiée du 12 février 1979, and no VAT. The regime sits below €50,000 of annual turnover, with tolerance to €55,000, and the previous calendar year's turnover is declared before 1 March each year.

Separately from the €100 short form, the regime carries its own simplified-invoicing allowance: since 1 January 2025 a taxable person under the franchise regime may issue simplified invoices and may not show VAT on them.

How do I correct an invoice I have already sent?

Not by editing or deleting it — the numbering has to stay unbroken, and the original stays inside the 10-year retention whatever happens next. The correction is a separate document that reverses or adjusts the original and refers to it. Luxembourg's public-procurement e-invoicing rules assume exactly that shape, applying to invoices and credit notes alike.

Does an emailed PDF count as an invoice?

For private customers, yes: the AED treats any document or message, on paper or in electronic form, that meets the content conditions above as an invoice. The exception is the public sector, where since 18 March 2023 a PDF does not satisfy the obligation — that needs a structured file sent through Peppol or MyGuichet.lu.

What to do with this

A single template carries most of this: the identity block, the per-rate breakdown, and whichever of the special mentions your business actually uses. Building it correctly at setup is a great deal cheaper than correcting it invoice by invoice afterwards. Only two decisions are hard to reverse — the numbering scheme, which you can never change cleanly, and whether your tooling can emit a structured e-invoice for public buyers. Everything else is a field you fill in once.

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