Invoices you receive: the 8-business-day deadline to accept or reject them

Every electronic invoice a supplier issues to you has to be confirmed or rejected by you before Hacienda, Costa Rica’s tax authority. The deadline is 8 business days counted from the first day of the month after the purchase. That is set by Article 10 of resolution MH-DGT-RES-0027-2024, the rule that governs current electronic receipts.

It is a small task that is easy to forget, and it feeds straight into your VAT return.

How the deadline is counted

The clock does not start on the invoice date but on the first day of the following month. And it counts business days only: weekends and public holidays do not count.

For example, every purchase you made in October is confirmed within the first 8 business days of November, whether the invoice is dated October 2 or October 30.

The three possible responses

• Full acceptance: the invoice is correct and you record all of it.
• Partial acceptance: part of it is wrong (an amount, an item that never arrived). The supplier has to issue a credit note for the difference.
• Rejection: the invoice does not apply. The supplier cancels it with a credit note and, if needed, issues a new one.

What happens if you don’t respond in time

Under the resolution, if the invoice is not covered by a tax benefit (such as an exemption) and you do not confirm it within the deadline, you are presumed to have accepted it in full, and it becomes part of what feeds into your tax returns.

That has a practical consequence: if the invoice was wrong, for an amount that did not match or a purchase you never made, you lost the chance to reject it, and Hacienda treats it as your purchase exactly as it came in.

So the recommendation is simple: review and respond to every invoice you receive each month, even the correct ones.

One more check: that Hacienda accepted the invoice

There is a second validation that does not depend on you. When your supplier sends the invoice, Hacienda validates it and replies with an acceptance or rejection message. Article 11 of the same resolution is clear: invoices without that acceptance message cannot be used to support tax credits or deductible expenses.

Before including a purchase in your return, confirm the invoice shows as accepted by Hacienda. If it was rejected, ask the supplier to correct it and issue it again.

A recommended monthly routine

1. In the first days of the month, review the inbox of invoices received for the previous month, in your invoicing system or in the TRIBU-CR Virtual Office.
2. Check each invoice against the actual purchase: amounts, taxes, and that the purchase really happened.
3. Send the acceptance, partial acceptance, or rejection before the eighth business day.
4. Verify that every invoice you will use for VAT is accepted by Hacienda.

If you keep this up to date, the VAT return due on the 15th is built on data you already reviewed, not on invoices nobody looked at.

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Source: Dirección General de Tributación, Resolution MH-DGT-RES-0027-2024 on the technical provisions for electronic receipts (in Spanish), Articles 10 and 11.