With no establishment and no Salvadoran tax registration, the DTE system does not reach you – imports are documented on the buyer's side. Revisit if you set up locally or register with Hacienda.

El Salvador's rollout runs on individual notification by the Ministerio de Hacienda, and notifications attach to registered taxpayers. The sources read show no DTE regime for non-residents without establishment – but a local registration (NIT/NRC) with Salvadoran-source activity can be notified like any other. Confirm whether a resolution names you before relying on an exemption.

The DTE obligation arrives by individual notification – groups have been added since July 2023, most recently from 1 February 2026. Once notified, the ministry's free system covers issuers of up to 500 documents a month; above that you need your own or a provider's system, which the v2.0 schema rules reach on 1 December 2026. Not notified yet? Watch for Hacienda's resolution – the deadline in it is yours.

If Hacienda has notified you, you already issue DTEs and receive the sello de recepción. The dated work is the Normativa de Cumplimiento DTE v2.0 – published 25 May 2026, mandatory 1 December 2026 for own-system and integrated issuers: separate generation and transmission dates, a 5-day back-dating window, UUID v4 generation codes and new event types. Penalties run from 30% of the undocumented operation's value (art. 239-A).