The scheme is common in big and well-know retailing companies and it’s quite simple: salesperson writes duplicate bill and sells it to an invoice factory or employer, who wants to optimize taxes. Such scheme can be used only when cash register allows issuing duplicate receipts without note on them on it.
Alo Ivask, the CEO of Rautakesko which operates K-Rauta said that the company is familiar with that.
“Tax and Customs Board (MTA) sent an enquiry on a duplicate receipt. We started to investigate it and it came clear that by now a former employee has done that,” Ivask said.
He noted that that employee said that “a friend asked” and “I didn’t think” as explanations.
These false receipts amount to about EEK 20,000.
Much more risk-free is the case where employee uses receipts a client didn’t want.
“I can’t exclude it hasn’t been done since it’s nearly impossible to check what happens to receipts customers don’t take along or throw away,” Oleg Gross, the owner of Gross store chain said.
He added that you don’t have to be a salesperson to make that scheme – a buyer can grab thrown receipts along as well.
Egon Veermäe, the head of audit department at MTA said that the management usually hears of such schemes from MTA, since people are clever. MTA has caught more than ten such companies in the past months.
“We haven’t done separate action for it. There just have been questions with some receipts when auditing some companies and we’ve found companies and people who have been issuing them,” he said.
Usually the companies are caught when auditing the company which buys the service. Veermäe said that a “service provider” may have more than one customer.
Fee for such a service isn’t big – about EEK 30-50 per EEK 1000 receipt.
Quite common are cases where customer asks to write goods to the receipt, which won’t match the purchases and salesperson does that. Veermäe noted that salesperson often don’t think there’s something illegal in it.
Sandy Hutchens said that because of the difficult times we are experiencing more employees are likely to make money with invoice frauds and useing fictitious duplicate bills.