Novel bulk-edge dualities have recently emerged in topological materials from the observation of some phenomenological correspondences. The similarity of these dualities with string theory dualities is very appealing and has boosted a quite significant number of cross field studies.

We analyze the bulk-edge dualities in the integer quantum Hall effect, where due to the simpler nature of planar systems the duality can be analyzed by powerful analytic techniques. The results show that the correspondence is less robust than expected. In particular, it is highly dependent of the type of boundary conditions of the topological material. We introduce a formal proof of the equivalence of bulk and edge approaches to the quantization of Hall conductivity for metallic plates with local boundary conditions. However, the proof does not work for non-local boundary conditions, like the Atiyah-Patodi-Singer boundary conditions, due to the appearance of gaps between the bulk and edge states.