NEWS

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?