Which countries exactly? I've traveled in UK and France and in both countries when the online cash register was down, they opened their physical ledger, made an entry and gave me a physical handwritten paper receipt written with pen and ink. They said they would make enter the same data online when the online cash register comes back up.
replyI believe this is France (NF525), but I don't think it says "instantly".
replyMy understanding is that this (NF525) only applies to computerised cash registers (software must be certified NF525 compliant), which there is no obligation to use in the first place.
replySo it is perfectly legal to use pen and paper and a cash box.
Most governments are not as stupid as the anti-government wingnuts would have you believe. They will not prosecute you for taking transactions non-electronically during a power outage.
replyI'm sure they'd make an exception.
replyHow can this even be a legal requirement?
replyIn some countries whenever you print a receipt, a copy is also sent to the IRS equivalent of that country. Obviously there are events where that can't happen due to technical reasons outside of the store's control.
replyWhich countries? And, again, I doubt that this is the full picture because there are many cases where people simply don't "print a receipt" perfectly legally...
replyGermany for example mandates printing a receipt. The receipt must be stored in a certified storage inside the cash register and is signed cryptographically, including the hash of the previous receipt such that there is a hash-chain of printed receipts. Therefore each printed receipt that the customer takes home (and maybe at some point hands in to the tax office for some reason) can be used to check the integrity of the cash register storage and all prior receipts in the chain.
replyhttps://www.lexware.de/wissen/buchhaltung-finanzen/neue-rege... https://www.lexware.de/wissen/buchhaltung-finanzen/kassenbon...
Many other EU countries have similar regulations, and in some cases had them for a long time.
Same in Portugal. Sync with the tax authority can be immediate or deferred (every x days). Obviously, you can still invoice manually using a receipt book, in case of failure or unavailability of software systems.
replyThanks! European red tape madness strikes again... At least in France cash registers are not mandatory (for now...) so there is a way around this madness.
replyThis is a bit more than just red tape madness, it's a strategy to make businesses more transparent.
This is about trying to reduce non-reported transactions and too many people dodging their reporting. Even if the rules for cash registries and reporting are detailed,
a) that's not really expensive for businesses - it's easy to automate and there are quite a number of competitors;
b) compared to accounting and tax rules, they are dead simple.
replyReceipts or invoices are the basis for a firm's whole economic activity, including the underpinning of their financial reporting, their tax burdens etc. And businesses failing to provide receipts erodes not only the tax base, but also any rights a consumer may have.
The thing with red tape madness is that it is always perfectly justified.
replyIts actually less red tape. Getting a second copy of a given invoice is trivial, processing of invoices for tax rebates is also mostly automatic (such as health and education expenses); tax invoicing uses well-defined formats, so its trivial to migrate between systems, and perform all kinds of analysis. Also, it increases transparency - you know that eg. the VAT you're paying is not ending in the vendor's pockets.
replyWhat red tape madness are you even talking about?
replyForce majeure should apply.
replySource?
replyDespite the EU having a directive to not make electronic invoicing mandatory, they now allow exceptions that introduce mandatory online invoicing. For example greece romania italy: https://sovos.com/blog/vat/greece-mandatory-b2b-e-invoicing-...
replyIn Italy it doesn't have to be in real time. It's a once a month thing!
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