During the last year, the inspectors of the Tax Administration temporarily closed 41 percent of the facilities they controlled due to the so-called non-recording of turnover through fiscal cash registers.
According to the report on the work of the Police Control Sector, almost half of the 1,495 shops that were banned due to non-issuance of fiscal invoices were catering facilities, and about a third of the trade, according to the NALED statement.
That avoiding the “knocking” of bills is a very common form of the gray economy is indicated by the high percentage of closed facilities in 2020 – 35 percent of the total number of controlled ones. The new system of fiscalization, which will be in full implementation from May 1 this year, could significantly change these statistics, because it will be incomparably easier for tax inspectors to detect irregularities.
NALED’s analysis showed that in addition to the existing 120,000 taxpayers, the fiscal cash register will have to be acquired by at least another 60,000 businessmen due to the expansion of the scope of fiscalization. This will be an additional challenge for the Tax Administration and its capacities. During the last year, 1,236 inspectors were available from the systematized 2,000 places, and only 660 for field controls. Digital fiscalization will help them be more efficient, and we believe that non-issuance of invoices will be reduced when unscrupulous caterers and traders realize that it is harder to avoid recording turnover – says the president of the Alliance for Fair Competition NALED Ivan Miletić.
New fiscal “cash registers” (the function of the cash register can also have a mobile phone, tablet or computer) in real time, ie at the time of issuing the invoice, sends data to the server of the Tax Administration. This will enable the collection of a much larger amount of information than is provided by the existing, technologically obsolete system, which sends data every 14 days. Greater volume and better quality of information will enable risk analysis to more effectively direct controls towards the most risky actions, instead of “door-to-door” visits, NALED announced.
A similar model of fiscalization was introduced in Croatia in 2013, and according to the data of the Tax Administration of that country, in the first year of implementation of the new system, in 35,000 conducted inspections, they managed to identify irregularities in 17% of businessmen. By 2019, they reduced the number of controls three times, but they discovered non-issuance of invoices in as many as 64 percent of facilities, with a good selection of actions that they will supervise.
The Croatian Tax Administration conducts controls by announcing to a certain sector (eg bakeries, traders, taxi drivers…) that it will control how they issue invoices for a week. Although they are correcting their behavior during those days, the real control actually took place a few weeks earlier when those same businessmen did not know they were under surveillance. By comparing the data, inspectors can easily detect differences in compliance. Also, the issuance of invoices is controlled by direct supervision in the taxpayer’s premises, but also via mobile devices, checking the issued invoices in real time.
“The responsible economy will have the greatest benefits from the new fiscalization system, because more efficient control suppresses unfair competition, which gains an unfair advantage and reduces turnover by not issuing invoices. Also, consumers will benefit greatly because they will be able to visit the Tax Reporting violations is the best way to detect and sanction the informal economy, and our latest survey found that only 18 percent of citizens are willing to report a facility where they do not receive a fiscal bill. and we want to change that, “Miletic points out, and Danas writes.
With the introduction of eFiscalization, the Ministry of Finance has implemented one of the key recommendations of the National Program for Combating the Gray Economy. The costs of switching to the new system have been alleviated thanks to a subsidy of 100 euros per registered facility and 100 euros per cash register, Nova writes.
