Pita and pickles are there, tax invoice?
Not always (Photo: ShutterStock, By tomertu)
With tahini, pickles and spicy, but without a receipt: the hummus and falafel industry is known as one where quite a few purchases are made for low amounts, for which no receipt is requested or given.
Which raises the question, are all sales legally registered and reported to the tax authorities?
The Tax Authority suspected that it was not - and last week, VAT investigators all over the country went on the "Golden Grain" operation, backed by representatives of the Income Tax offices and police officers.
One part of the operation focused on falafels and chickpeas throughout the country, north-central and south, with the aim of checking the plausibility of the report, The level of compliance with the instructions for bookkeeping, recording receipts and the law to reduce the use of cash. A total of 168 audits were conducted.
In addition, collection and enforcement operations were conducted with 1,661 dealers from various branches.
About NIS 120 million was collected from 1,250 dealers, and 112 vehicles were impounded until payment was settled.
As of the time of writing these lines, 7 vehicles were released after their debt was settled.
In addition, 54 credit foreclosures were carried out, after which most of the dealers came to settle their debt.
And we have falafel, falafel, falafel - but there is no cash register (Photo: ShutterStock)
"A month or two and I'll make a payment"
During the promotion, visitors arrived at the falafel stand in Petah Tikva.
The audit was conducted following a suspicion that the stand owner is not properly reporting his income.
After early observations, a control purchase was made, even after which the stall owner did not record the purchase anywhere.
After the employees of the tax authority identified themselves to him, the owner of the booth said that he keeps a private record at home about his income, and gave incorrect information or refused to answer additional questions.
In another case, in a well-known business selling hummus in Netanya, a search was carried out in the business accompanied by police officers and deficiencies in the management of the books were found.
During the audit it was discovered that there is no cash register in the business.
When asked why he doesn't have a cash register, he replied: "Soon I will set up a cash register... one month two months."
In another case, the visitors arrived at the store in Acre, while the owner of the business was not present.
His father and the employees at the store refused to cooperate, did not agree to open the cash register, lowered the electricity switch and therefore the tax authority employees had to perform a manual audit only.
During the manual audit that was carried out at the cash register, it was discovered that there are gaps between the revenue registration and the cash found in the cash register.
In all of the mentioned cases, the files of the dealers were transferred to the audit and assessment department of the regional VAT offices for further in-depth audit.
As part of the operation, extensive collection and enforcement operations were also conducted. In one of them, a Matach Tikva dealer was found who used to accumulate many debts which he did not pay. After his vehicle was confiscated by the enforcement, The dealer came to the VAT offices and settled a debt payment of NIS 50,000.
Of money
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Tags
falafel
Hummus
VAT
Internal Revenue Service
