Majority of Hungarians support government’s crackdown on black economy – SURVEY

Budapest, August 16 (MTI) – The vast majority of Hungarians support the government’s crackdown on the shadow economy but many do not consider the infrastructure needed to tackle grey and black markets sufficiently developed, a survey released by the Nézőpont Institute on Tuesday showed.

Fully 59 percent of the survey’s respondents said they typically encounter tax avoidance when paying for household repair and maintenance services, such as plumbing, building work or cleaning. This generally entails failure to receive invoices and receipts.

Nézőpont found that retail outlets fail to provide customers with receipts 53 percent of the time while hospitality and catering outlets fail to give receipts 19 percent of the time.

The survey revealed that most people consider the use of electronic payment systems effective in tackling fraud. Fully 88 percent of respondents said they were satisfied with the electronic payment opportunities available to them.

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Domestic purchases made with electronic cards grew by 22.1 percent in Q1 this year compared with the same period in 2015, according to central bank data.

Fully 79 percent of Nézőpont’s respondents said they regularly pay by bank card in supermarkets or shopping malls. However, only 36 percent tend to pay by bank card in convenience stores and 21 percent in the hospitality sector.

A mere 5 percent said they regularly use a bank card to pay for services like haircuts or taxi rides.

Fully 53 percent said the installation of online cash registers linking retail shops directly to tax authority NAV’s system was an effective way of encouraging retailers to provide receipts. Forty-five percent said electronic road tolls were effective in tackling VAT fraud.

However, 13-15 percent of respondents said these systems were not yet robust enough. They opined that high-income professionals such as lawyers, dentists or plastic surgeons should also be required to use online cash registers.

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The survey was conducted between May 2 and 18 with a sample of 1,000 adults by Nézőpont’s Economic Whitening Roundtable. The division was founded in 2016 and employs the services of financial institutions, civil and governmental groups, including the State Audit Office, the National Bank of Hungary, MKB Bank, the economy ministry and the Central Statistical Office.

Source: MTI