Real-time cash registers in Hungary. A success story

Hungary introduced online, real-time cash registers on a number of retail businesses in 2014. These cash registers are certified by the tax authorities and they are connected to their database so that all sales data is automatically reported in real time. Following these changes, an announcement was made recently explaining that the VAT gap and overall tax evasion has been significantly reduced.

These results have led the Hungarian government to extend the scope of businesses obliged to use real time cash registers. As from September 2016, garage and repair shops, discos and dance clubs, gyms and laundry service providers will be obliged to use these cash registers. In January 2017, the scope will be further extended to taxi services.

These cash registers where already introduced in Portugal as well. The French tax authorities have also published plans to introduce a similar system in 2018. Giving the successful results in those countries where they have been introduced, we should expect more jurisdictions to start introducing this requirement in the coming years.

Update 14/03/2018

The Hungarian goverment has planned broad implementation of the real-time reporting obligation as soon as from July 2018. We discussed real time repoting in Hungary more extensively in this article.