Tax evasion

The Austrian Financial Secretary Sonja Steßl makes a proposal: She wants to start a receipt lottery to combat fraud in catering establishments. Many restaurant owners do not report their revenues; with a cash register receipt and obligation she wants to change that. The additional lottery is intended to attract the customers for these measures.

The Ministry of Finance estimates that the hospitality industry evade every year between 500 million and 1 billion euros in sales tax…

A case that makes you think about all of those businesses making their fortune quicker then any competitor in their industry. And why would they stop!?

Original article:
Two businessmen who own or collect license fees from about 20 Italian Village Pizza stores in Western Pennsylvania admitted in federal court Wednesday that they systematically underreported their sales to the Internal Revenue Service and encouraged their franchise holders to do the same…

“We are taking a closer look at the cafe, restaurant, catering and takeaway industry because about 40,000 businesses in the industry [nationwide] lodge late,” ATO senior assistant commissioner Michael Hardy.

“The ATO has been able to use the data from contractor reporting in the building industry to identify those businesses in the building trades that don’t have any involvement in sub-contracting, and so are mostly operating in the business-to-consumer end of the market,” Mr Hardy said. “Omitted income is more prevalent in the business-to-consumer end of the market so this information lets us sub-divide the market more carefully.”

The tax authority has been tracking the credit card transactions of almost 1 million businesses. The 275,000 businesses that were targeted were flagged as part of the Tax Office’s wider data-matching program.

Read more about “ATO deploys computers to catch cash economy cheats”: click here 

After extensive research on the subject, Professor Richard T. Ainsworth managed to bring zappers and phantom-ware to the attention of the OECD. The group formed action team to deal with specifics and came out with several recommendations. See paper on Electronic Sales Suppression.

To be updated…

Dutch news.nl reports: The men are suspected of defrauding the tax office out of at least €1.5m through false accounting. Tax inspectors stumbled across the fraud after finding irregularities in the book-keeping of one Super de Boer franchise holder and extended their investigation to other branches.

Cash receipts hidden from accounting served as utility to bring large sums of extra income to owners of Nifty Fifty’s fast food chain. PhillyBurbs reports: “Owners plead guilty”.

Twenty-two restaurants in the UK are currently being considered for criminal prosecution after HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) issued a crackdown on tax dodgers.

Bangkok Post: Revenue crackdown on fraudulent receipts