SRI Gives Ecuador Commercial Transport Businesses Until December

Ecuador's Internal Revenue Service extended the compliance deadline for commercial transport taxpayers. Except for taxis, operators now have until December 31, 2026 to update their RUC and adapt electronic invoicing.

The extension appears in Resolution NAC-DGERCGC26-00000028, signed on July 31, 2026. It applies to commercial transport modes including heavy cargo, light cargo, school and institutional transport, tourism, mixed transport, and alternative transport.

What operators need to change

The SRI says commercial-transport taxpayers have until December 31 to update the activity recorded in the RUC. They also have until that date to make the changes needed to include the vehicle's license plate field on electronic invoices.

From January 1, 2027, the SRI will update the activity in the RUC ex officio for taxpayers that did not make the change during the extension. Taxpayers that already updated their RUC do not have to reverse the change.

The rules also address how operators, partners, and shareholders can temporarily continue their invoicing arrangements while implementing the new requirements. The report says the values invoiced through those issuance points must be declared as taxable income when applicable.

That means the deadline is not only a registration task. Operators need to compare the activity on the RUC with the activity their invoices describe, confirm that the vehicle data can be captured in the electronic-invoice field, and make sure the resulting income is reported in the right place. The source does not say that every invoicing platform is already configured for the change, so the accounting and software check should happen before the end of the window.

Why this matters to expats

This is mainly a business-compliance story, not a rule for ordinary private car owners. It matters to expats who operate or invest in commercial transport, school transport, tourism transport, logistics, or another covered activity. It can also matter to businesses that contract with an operator and need clean invoice data for their own records.

The practical move is to ask the accountant or invoicing provider whether the RUC activity and license-plate field are already correct. The deadline is December 31, but the operational work may involve the RUC, invoice software, and income reporting at the same time. If the activity is still wrong on January 1, 2027, the SRI's ex-officio update becomes the next issue to resolve.

The extension is therefore helpful, but it should not be treated as permission to wait until the last week. A business may need to coordinate an RUC update with an electronic-invoice provider and with the person who prepares its tax filings. Partners and shareholders also need to understand how the temporary issuance arrangements affect reported income. The published rule is specific to commercial transport, so the first question should be whether the taxpayer is actually operating in one of the listed modes.

For an expat owner, the cleanest record is one that connects the RUC activity, the vehicle information, the invoice, and the tax return. That makes the deadline a practical administrative project rather than a last-minute software surprise.