Fiscalization

The world is entering a very turbulent period where economies are becoming dependent on proper fiscalization. Many countries in 2016 has started implementation processes related to changes of the existing or defining new fiscal laws and regulations, launching tenders for the procurement of necessary HW and SW for fiscal solutions and finally in some countries successful fiscalization has generated new revenues.

The upcoming year (2017) will remain very colorful, in terms of different views of what is the best fiscalization method. Many countries have already voted new legislations or are just now preparing for it. The goal is common, combatting the black economy, mostly in cash-based sectors. Following is a quick recap of events that are ongoing in some fiscal countries:

Poland is one of the oldest fiscal countries using fiscal cash registers and fiscal printers. In period of 25 years there was no technological advancement, all devices were based on fiscal memory. Poland is country with approximately 2 million cash registers, among which 600.000 have twin-roll printer (receipt and paper journal roll).

According to Eurostat statistics shadow economy in Poland is estimated at 50 billion zł (more than 11 billon of EUR).

After years of hesitation, the federal German government takes up the fight against manipulated receipts. Until the draft bill, (“A draft law for protection against manipulation of digital recordings”) presented in March 2016, there was no special requirements in Germany, to deal with manipulated cash registeres. The lack of this regulation resulted in a growing number of taxpayers found to be manipulating sale data records from year to year. Recently, in July 2016, the draft bill was supplemented with amendments which was further defining the individual articles of the previous draft bill and prolonging date of the law implementation.

Six months after the launch of the online certified cash registers in Slovenia, number of certified receipts is stabilized at about 3 million per day. Already more than half a billion receipts are signed and stored with Revenue Authority up to now.

Bourgas, on the Black Sea, June 14 (BTA) – The National Revenue Agency (NRA) is tightening the control over compliance with tax and social security legislation along the Black Sea coast during the summer tourist season, the Agency reported Tuesday. The goal is to shed as much light as possible on the tourism sector and ensure proper revenue taxation and payment of social insurance contributions. NRA employees will be deployed to the Black Sea from other parts in the country.

The government may distribute Electronic Cash Register (ECR) and Point of Sales (POS) machines among traders to prevent evasion of value-added tax.

The traders, who are eligible to use such electronic machines, have to collect those machines mandatory from the government and use them at their selected stores, so no traders can evade the VAT or manipulate the transaction records, said officials.

The government is planning to introduce the system in the wake of rampant VAT evasion across the country.

The first results, since the introduction of fiscal cash registers or certified cash registers, are officially announced on the portal of Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Slovenia.

Presented results are based on the data from the first quarter of 2016.

It shows that the introduction of certified cash registers has positive effect, which reflects on the increase of the declared turnovers as well as in the increase of the VAT collected.

The total turnover of the taxpayers using cash registers in the period February-April 2016 was EUR 5.4 billion, compared to the same period of the last year increased by EUR 293.3 million (5.7%).

New online cash registers are made available for Russian business people as of January 1, 2016. Old fiscal cash registers and printers can be used until the expiration of their life cycle, but not more than 7 years from the date of its activation. Online cash registers are already tested in Moscow and the Moscow region, as well as in Tatarstan and Kaluga region. The experiment was conducted by the Russian government.

The new version of the fiscal law has changed technical requirements for the invoicing systems and the penalty statute.

Cash Registers “Кассовые аппараты (ККМ)”, which taxpayers have used so far, are so-called fiscal memory cash registers, which records the totals of all receipts per day. In the case of a tax audit, the inspector reads the data from the fiscal memory (daily totals) and compares them with the data recorded in the ledger.

In both former Yugoslav republics, now separate sovran states Serbia and Montenegro, almost at the same time the news broke out about the government intent to upgrade existing fiscal law to the online model, which has triggered public debate in local media, mostly waged by the people working in the production, distribution and maintenance of fiscal devices.

Success story of the online system in Croatia has caught attention of their neighbouring governments, who truly believe that small investment of such kind can produce significant fiscal impact. Others (industry) argue that success of the Croatian model is quite commercialised and exaggerated, and that investment is not only burdening taxpayers with significant cost of POS modification and Internet fees, but also Croatian Revenue Authority has seen an increase in the cost of audits. Who is right and who is wrong?