Standard Audit File for Tax (SAF-T)
What is Standard Audit File for Tax (SAF-T)?
Standard Audit File for Tax (SAF-T) is a standardized electronic file format, developed by the OECD, that businesses use to submit accounting and transaction data to a national tax authority. It packages general ledger entries, invoices, and other financial records into one machine-readable file that auditors can process without requesting a custom export.
Tax authorities in a growing number of countries require SAF-T submissions to speed up audits and cross-check reported figures against a business's underlying accounting records. Because the file follows a fixed schema, an auditor can load data from different companies and different accounting systems into the same analysis tools instead of requesting a bespoke export for every review. Each country that adopts SAF-T sets its own submission trigger, data scope, and technical variant of the base OECD schema, so a file built for one jurisdiction usually isn't valid in another without adjustment.
Key requirements
- Format: XML, structured according to the OECD's base schema or a country-specific variant of it.
- Data scope: general ledger transactions, sales and purchase invoices, payment records, and inventory movements, though the exact fields required vary by jurisdiction.
- Submission trigger: some countries require periodic filing (monthly or annual); others generate the file only on request during a tax audit.
- Source system: accounting or ERP software exports the file directly, since compiling transaction-level detail by hand isn't practical.
SAF-T sits alongside other EU tax-data reporting obligations rather than replacing them. , for example, targets cross-border card payment data specifically, while SAF-T covers a business's full accounting ledger. The two can apply to the same business at once, feeding from overlapping but not identical source data.
Who it applies to
SAF-T obligations apply to businesses registered for VAT or corporate tax in a country that has adopted the standard, though the exact scope (company size, revenue threshold, resident vs. non-resident status) varies by jurisdiction. Portugal, Poland, Lithuania, Norway, and Romania are among the countries that have implemented SAF-T mandates, with additional countries phasing in requirements on a rolling schedule. A business operating across several SAF-T jurisdictions typically needs its accounting system configured to generate a compliant file for each country separately, since schemas and field definitions differ between them.
SAF-T is a tax-reporting standard, not a payments or data-security one: it's a different obligation from , which governs how card data is handled, or , which regulates payment services. A business that already maintains detailed transaction records for purposes usually has much of the underlying ledger data SAF-T requires, though the two filings serve separate authorities and separate rules.
Penalties for non-compliance
Penalties for missing or incorrect SAF-T submissions vary by country and can include fines, increased audit scrutiny, or a tax authority withholding a VAT refund until a compliant file is provided. Because enforcement and fine amounts are set by each country's own tax code, a business operating in multiple SAF-T jurisdictions needs to track filing deadlines and formats separately rather than assuming one calendar or one schema applies everywhere.
