Frankfurt (AFP)

Becoming compulsory in early January in Germany, the systematic printing of receipts to thwart tax evasion exasperates small traders, pushing the lobby of the sector to ask for accommodation.

"The cash registers of small shops have electronic chips which can be read at any time by the tax authorities. Why return to the old system?" Wonders Christian Koch, owner of the Berlin bookstore Hammett, at the AFP.

"It's annoying, because out of 50 tickets I print a day, I will throw 49 in the trash," he adds.

Contrary to France, German law has just required retailers equipped with a cash register to issue a receipt for each purchase, even for a loaf of a few tens of cents, including when the customer does not want it .

Besides the booksellers, the bakers and owners of "Imbissbuden" (snack bars) are outraged, because their numerous small transactions create a mountain of vouchers to print.

Designating around noon a basket overflowing with discarded tickets, an employee of the Frankfurt snack "Best Worscht in Town" explains having "already emptied once", lambasting "real bullshit for the environment".

- Tax fraud -

Voted in 2016 under former Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble, the receipt law suddenly re-emerged in the debate in December 2019, just before it was implemented.

The Conservative Minister for the Economy and close to Angela Merkel, Peter Altmaier, begged his Social Democratic colleague for finance, Olaf Scholz, to give up this device, especially since the tickets, most often thermo-printed, are not not recyclable.

And even once the law in force, the federation HDE of the retail trade still proposed Tuesday, in a letter to Mr. Scholz, to release from this obligation the merchants emitting on average more than 500 receipts per day.

"This represents a coupon per minute for a store open for 9 hours a day," details this letter obtained by AFP.

But so far, the Social Democratic Minister has excluded any development in the name of the fight against tax fraud, difficult by nature to assess but estimated by the tax union at some 10 billion euros.

"I don't think small businesses try to escape taxes a lot," says Sarah, a customer of the Hammett bookstore. "We should rather take care of those like Amazon, and make them pay taxes in Germany," she said.

- Prohibitive budget -

The German administration has in the crosshairs the catering and other sectors accustomed to cash payments, where cases of fraud flourish.

Also, Berlin obliges the traders to put their cash registers safe from any technical manipulation before next October, which is still far from being the case everywhere.

"It comes down to almost 1,000 euros per device, and much more when it comes to buying new ones," laments the president of the craft federation (ZDH) with AFP.

The budget becomes "prohibitive for a bakery chain with 30 to 40 branches," he adds.

The Ministry of Finance pointed out to him that Austria, Italy, Portugal and other European countries applied the compulsory printing of receipts without any problem.

At HDE, we retort that France has just voted in December for its gradual end, unless the client requires to leave with a cash voucher.

© 2020 AFP