Small businesses not issuing receipts said to harm large companies

TIRANA, April.30- The operations of small businesses which do not use cash registers disrupts the economy’s regular financial cycles and translates into increased taxing of large businesses whose activities are more regularly documented.
Most small stores in Albania operate without giving out cash receipts to their customers. However, the emerging mini-markets and supermarkets have been the first to install cash registers. The business association, Konfindustria, called for the inclusion of small business into the Value Added Tax system and the formalization of all transactions. Manager Gjergj Buxhuku explained that customers are already paying the VAT though the government is not collecting this revenue from small business. Experts say that, nevertheless, such a measure of requiring cash registers would translate into higher prices. It would also call for new laws since the boundary between small and large business would be less clear in the case of formal transaction recordings. All sides agree that such a measure is mandatory for fighting the informal economy and would complete the last chain of the modern fiscal system.