What is the Digital Signature for?

Conservation of resources in the office

Because our office work is geared to conserve resources, we try to minimize the consumption of paper for day-to-day business. The paperless office is our objective. That’s why the bookkeeping and administration of eurobinia is performed digitally. Our confirmations and invoices are mainly sent and received by email.
In order that the declared sales tax of our digital invoices will be accepted for input tax deduction, the digital invoice is provided with a qualified digital signature (§ 14 paragraph 3 Value Added Tax Act). This signature is directly attached to the PDF-invoice. A separate signature file is not needed.

Which duties are assigned to the customer concerning the digital invoice?

The duty of the customer is to file the invoices according to the statutory provisions. The Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) prescribe that the recipient of invoice has to demonstrable certify the validity of the qualified digital signature. The digital invoices have to be archived together with the verification documents. When issuing to the tax office the signature and the verification documents of the relevant invoices have to be presented on request. Further information can be obtained at the responsible tax office.

How can integrity and general validity of the signature be verified?

Validity and integrity of the certificate can be checked with Adobe Reader. Version 8 (and newer) should be used because older versions do not fully support digital signatures. Details of the signature as date of signature, owner and further information are available inside the PDF file at the menu tab at the left side. It must be clicked on the signature link. Is that function used the first time, the signature has to be added to your “trustworthy identities”. After it the signature is shown as valid. That can be recognized by the green check mark when selecting the signature.

To accomplish a complete and recorded verification we recommend the application of the digiSeal Reader. The freeware verification tool and its manuals are available for download here.