Auditors: End of electronic cash registers made detecting tax evasion harder

The abolition of an electronic cash register system in January last year meant the loss of a key mechanism for targeting tax evasion, Czechia’s Supreme Audit Office said on Monday. In the case of value added tax, the system, which was connected to a central database, chiefly helped to detect entities that did not register as taxpayers even though they exceeded the legal limit for mandatory registration, the state agency said.

The electronic record of sales system was introduced in 2016 but was suspended in spring 2020 during the Covid crisis and later became de facto voluntary. It was formally ended at the start of last year.