Meanwhile in Germany: https://paymentandbanking.com/en/tag/bonpflicht-en/
Since January 1, 2020, the receipt requirement has been in force in Germany, and retailers and restaurateurs must issue a receipt for every transaction.
That works to combat tax fraud though. Cash payment is incredibly popular in Germany, partly because many stores or restaurants outright refuse card payments to avoid paying taxes.
How is that supposed to combat tax fraud? Nobody keeps their receipts, and in the end if im not offered one when i dont want one, im not gonna ask for it
The receipt is printed by a certified cash register. It even has a digital signature at the bottom.
Sure, the receipt will be thrown away, but the register keeps a record. So store owners can check in their employees and tax authorities can check on the owners.
The receipt is irrelevant except for ensuring that the purchase is in record.
It’s much harder to run a tax-free cash-only side business if everyone expects a receipt and the receipt printer has an audit trail.
That works to combat tax fraud though
If there only was a way to do something like this electronically…
There’s no obligation to provide a paper “Bon,” stores can just offer digital receipts by default.
Well, it’s not mandatory to print a receipt in Germany. Only the purchase itself needs to be recorded and the receipt can be issued in a digital form as well. It’s up to the retailers how they want to implement this.
Let’s take the two local bakeries in my neighborhood as an example. One still issues paper receipts and complains since three years about this law with witty share pics that he has to raise prices because of all the paper he needs to buy and that the government does not trust family businesses. And the other one simply provides a QR code on the cash registry’s screen which I can scan within 60 seconds to download the receipt (if I want to) or he prints one if asked to do so.
In fact, I do not see big differences to the situation in France.
Not sure if there’s a scheme in place here in Scotland or UK, but I always get asked if I want a receipt or not for several years now. Receipts and plastic bags are only by request. The main exceptions seem to be restaurants and public transport.
However, my local supermarket has installed receipt scanning barriers at the self checkout - so those used to have optional receipts, but no longer. I guess profits before environment.
We have them at self checkouts here in Norway. Can’t get out of the store without them. I do not like it
In the Netherlands the terminals ask if you want a full receipt or a short one with just the barcode to exit.
What exactly does the bar code encode? I suppose it must be the unique identifier of the receipt. Can you look it up on the web? Or is it only useful to the employees of the store?
Assuming that the Norwegian system is in anyway similar to the Finnish system I use, they just print the system id and the n:th of you on a piece of receipt while the system just checks that no similar register/customer id’s have passed.
We tested this with friends where multiple friends bought stuff from the same register, but exited using only a single one and they were usable afterwards, but only once per.
Sometimes I really question the real motives of the environemtalists pushing for such petty changes. just make them biodegradable. especialy for things like groceries where there isn’t a big expectation for returns.
While I agree that we should focus heavily on the big stuff I really don’t understand why people get so upset about this. Everything little thing helps and if people just said “yes of course we should stop that” and moved on to the nex thing, we could get so much further. It’s just such a low hanging fruit to ban stupid receipts that are generally not wanted.
Other low hanging fruit examples: single use plastic bags, single use plastic plates and cups, unnesseary packaging for products, non biodegradable packaging, unnesseary lights in stores that are closed, the smallest coin size like the 1-50 cent etc etc etc. Literally everything helps so don’t get upset.
If you can’t handle the small changes how the hell do you handle the bigger changes that are to come.
More important low hanging fruit:
- Private jets
- Multiple vehicles
- Multiple homes
Why are people always so small minded about this? Have you not considered how immensely more polluting a car or a house is than a plastic bag? Have you not considered the people affected: a few of the richest vs millions of average people?
Think big. Think rich. Those are the changes we need.
