Receipt has been mandatory in Germany since 2020: a receipt must be issued even for a pretzel.
The Ministry of Finance draws a conclusion.
Whether it is a clothing store, bakery or corner shop: Since January 1, 2020, receipts have to be issued for all processes at electronic cash registers.
The obligation to issue receipts was introduced by the Federal Ministry of Finance to make life difficult for tax evaders.
Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel justified the step by stating that the state could not blindly accept that billions of tax revenues were lost
, reported the Bavarian Broadcasting Corporation (BR).
According to the
Haufe Finance
portal
, the receipt can be issued in paper form or - if the customer agrees - electronically (e.g. in PDF format).
The receipt * must include the following information:
Name and address of the entrepreneur providing the service
Quantity and type of the delivered items or the scope and type of other services
Amount per payment method
Time of the start and end of billing
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Receipt requirement since 2020 ensures overflowing rubbish bins behind German tills
What is supposed to ensure more transparency in retail has many critics. First and foremost, environmental protection is neglected when it comes to mandatory receipts, according to many people. Even if the customer does not want a receipt at all, it has to be printed out - which results in a lot of paper waste. As the BR reported,
the Bavarian retail trade has recorded more than 300,000 kilometers of additional receipts per year since the introduction of the obligation to issue receipts
. According to the BR, the Ministry of Finance says that no printed receipt is necessary: an electronic receipt on the customer's smartphone is also allowed. Overcrowded rubbish bins behind German tills show that reality usually looks different.
Whether the receipt requirement has achieved its actual goal - namely to make tax evasion more difficult - cannot yet be answered in the affirmative, but neither can it be denied.
So alleging Treasury there are
no estimates
how tax evasion have so far been avoided by the Bonpflicht so
br.de
.
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