The EU keeps adding more bureaucratic rules. Are they trying to prove the Brexiteers right?

[DFW]

Now, to supposedly "combat tax evasion (yeah, sure)," a regulation has just been announced that a paper invoice must be issued for EVERY transaction, no matter how small. You want to go into a baker and buy a 56 cent roll to take out? They have to issue a paper sales receipt and you have to keep it. In Germany, the land of 300 kinds of bread and an estimated 360,000 bakery shops, this means an estimated five BILLION extra slips of paper a year. Germany is already running a surplus, for Pete's sake!

Starting next year, the rural farmers in the farmers markets, which are in every town, big and small, including mine, where you buy a stick of celery and a clove of garlic for 62 euro cents, also now have to issue a paper sales slip for every single transaction they do. The Germans included in their version of the new law that hardship cases (like bakeries and farmers who do the markets) can apply for an exception, but it is cumbersome and expensive. It will not be granted routinely. It must be applied for and approved. A small bakery or the small farmer has neither the time nor the money to mount a legal challenge to a law like that.

This is on the way to the total control society the East Germans used to dream of. One way the Nazis used to ferret out families hiding Jews was to check on how much food they were buying. If it seemed to be more than the household needed to feed itself, hello, this is the Gestapo, we just need to check your walls for hidden rooms, won't take but a few minutes, so sit down and shut up, please. I'm kidding, of course. They didn't say "please."

Now, if you go into a chain grocery store, they have cash registers where you already get a paper receipt. Buying a car or a TV? DUH! Of course you get an invoice. But that was already the case, just like it is in the States. No new law was needed for that. But making EVERY tiny business do this for every transaction not only creates a mountain of paper, it also takes up time from the small businesses that can least afford it. It will also require more even more bureaucrats to do the auditing.

It's almost as if the EU is trying to convince Great Britain that they got out while the getting was good. This is NOT what the EU was created to do. Europeans have always loved to have excessive numbers of bureaucrats who have no conception of what it is like to make a living out there in the real world. They haven't the slightest conception of a world where you have to pay your own expenses, and try to make enough to pay the people that you hire. They sit in taxpayer-paid offices from day one, the higher-ups driven there and back by taxpayer-paid cars and drivers, and dream up endless numbers of regulations that they, themselves, will never have to follow, suffer the consequences of, or take responsibility for.

The EU, if it isn't careful, will become exactly what Bill Clinton said about the Republicans: "If it ain't broke, BREAK IT!"

[unc70]

1. Hasn't this already been the law in Italy?

Of course it is a widely-ignored law in Italy. My impression is that is the "rule" of laws in Italy, particularly ones involving taxes. In Italy, there are elaborate customs to avoid taxes, even on large transactions like buying a house. I assume things are much more strict in Germany.

[DFW]

6. Italy has its own set of rules about obeying stupid regulations

Mostly, that translates out to: they don't. An Italian colleague told me recently that the government forbade cash transactions over €1000 for a while. Not only was this ignored completely, but government receipts of value-added tax declined drastically, as VAT could only be collected on declared transactions. Even people willing to pay the VAT couldn't do so if their whole transaction was unauthorized. He told me that Italy recently upped that limit to €3000, and suddenly the government's receipts of VAT jumped dramatically practically overnight. Germany had a €10,000 limit, over which cash transactions had to be reported. They were the only major EU country running a budget surplus. They are probably going to lower that to €2000 next year, presumably in order to reduce their tax intake, increase unreported cash transactions, and reduce their surplus so as to bring them in line with less efficient EU countries (or something).

There is a standing joke here in Europe about the four different kind of legal systems we have:

The French system, where all that is not forbidden is permitted
The German system, where all that is not permitted is forbidden
The Russian system, where all is forbidden, including that which is permitted
and...The Italian system, where all is permitted, including that which is forbidden

[Thyla]

2. Source?

[DFW]

4. Die Rheinische Post, my local newspaper, end of last week

Serves the greater Düsseldorf area.

*Düsseldorf is the capital city of Nordrhein-Westfalen, the most populous state in the country.

[Thyla]

7. Shouldn't be too hard to find...

the actual EU directive or vote that took place on it then should it?

This is the current directive, I see no mention of it being changed anywhere including external searches.
https://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/business/vat/eu-vat-rules-topic/vat-invoicing-rules_en#when_invoice

And given the recent implementation of an e-invoicing directive there should be zero requirements for paper receipts to be mandatory.

It could be each nations interpretation of the current directives in which case it's not so much the EU making the rules as it is the nation applying them.

Or more likely it is typical anti eu scaremongering like straight bananas.
So yes this is exactly the kind of thing that caused brexit.

Given there is no requirement for a receipt to be produced in countries such as Ireland and the UK for example, who are both for now in the EU, then I would expect that there is a proper EU source to this supposed rule change.

[DFW]

9. The EU issues directives, and there is sometimes wiggle room for the individual countries

This was in the German newspaper, and was specific as to how it would affect German small businesses. As bakeries and local farmers markets are certain to be more numerous in the EU's most populous country, obviously these were at the forefront of the article. The timing of the article suggests that the decision of the regulation and how it would be applied to Germany was rather recent. Otherwise, the article would have included how Some areas of the German economy were taking it on. Germany has many organizations of similar small businesses, and if the bakeries, numerous as they are, have one, it wouldn't surprise me at all. Whether or not it has any financial or legal clout is another, and separate, question.

For example, the Germans enacted a tax a few years ago that was completely illegal under the German Constitution. A neighbor of ours is a judge in the Düsseldorf tax court, and a professor of tax law at the University of Bonn. What the government did was add VAT to the price of gasoline, but not JUST the gasoline. Gasoline at the pump used to consist of the price of the fuel plus a "mineral oil tax." The government added VAT to the TOTAL sum of the fuel AND the tax, so they are levying a tax on a tax. The German constitution forbids any form of double taxation, and our neighbor said it was blatantly illegal. If someone had five years free time and a million euros for the court fight, he said a constitutional court fight would get the tax rescinded. Unfortunately, none of us knew such an individual.

[Hav]

3. What a laughable, ridiculous reaction

This is the lounge so it might be comedy I don't get.
It may be a burden for the shops but to compare that to total control of society or the Nazis is ridiculous. It's not even funny comparing the consequences: on the one side a trip to Auschwitz and then there is printing out a receipt.

Sellers of other goods and buyers have to prove their transactions as well. Apparently there's a reason you cannot rely on good faith and let people make up their numbers. And for the customer side, if I want to get my meal paid by the company, I need a receipt as well.
But hey, feel free to get worked up like that about something like this.

[DFW]

5. Me and about one million small merchants here in Germany

Creeping control is EXACTLY how the Nazis did it, which is why the Germans are highly allergic to this kind of increasing nitpicky control, and also why the Brexit movement had such success in the absence of any other logical reason to leave. They made light of just this sort of thing again and again in their ads, and got away with it. I don't know what part of Germany you live in, but here in the Rheinland, the most populous part of the country, the vast majority resents it fiercely. Your post presupposes fluency in German and an intimate knowledge of daily life here in Germany, but obviously not in my area.

[Hav]

8. It's still hyperbole

As I said, it may be a burden but what's the difference to a receipt for very small purchases at the drugstore or supermarket? They, too, have to print the receipts and keep a record for obvious reasons. Why is the same in another shop suddenly total Nazi control? And how does my post presuppose German fluency and intimate knowledge of daily life? For what I said that makes no sense at all and rather seemed like a tactic to silence non-Germans who don't share your views.
And btw, I'm living in the southern part of Germany. I'm sure small bakeries will resent it simply because it's a change but I'm also pretty confident that those bakery chains where you pay at a checkout already provide receipts and no one seems to question that.

[Fla Dem]

10. This is probably better suited for General Discussion, not the Lounge.

[DFW]

11. I pondered that before posting

But since it wasn't of profound importance to Democratic politics, I opted for the Lounge. People who react nastily as if it were meant as a personal attack show up in all sorts of threads. Post some thread about cotton candy, and you'll always find someone who thought you were starting a debate over the sugar allocation to sharecroppers.

[Fla Dem]

12. I see Gen Discussion as just that, General, not exclusively politics, but news of the day.

I really noted that to you because sometimes people just use the wrong forum by mistake. They're in the Lounge, so when they go to post, that's where it ends up. But no problem.