We are struck by claims from people in the market that they had known for years that one of the two major chains under investigation for tax evasion had been doing what it was doing, while the relevant state authorities had not noticed. They are clearly not alone.The same people claim that other companies also use digital forms of tax evasion, although there has been no indication (yet) that they are in the tax authorities’ sights.
We cannot, of course, verify their claims. But the relevant authorities have a duty to uncover the sophisticated methods chains use to bypass electronic systems.
Debit and credit cards, digital wallets and IRIS are undoubtedly important weapons in the fight against tax evasion. They leave a digital trail in the banking system, make it possible to compare point-of-sale sales with the revenue declared by a company, and limit so-called under-the-table cash transactions.
But, based on the leaks, we know that Pizza Fan used illegal software to digitally alter the data for some orders in its official books.
The Choriatiko chain, meanwhile, did something else. It allegedly used more than 400 fictitious companies to move money from one to another using false details, with the aim of securing illegal VAT refunds and so on.
So something needs to be done to protect the real-time transaction system, as experts call it. Restaurant chains use an order-management system that can be modified and have parallel software installed.
The IT company that develops the software should therefore also be held jointly liable, and its licence should be withdrawn if the software is found to have been tampered with. In this context, experts say, every software update should be reported to the Independent Authority for Public Revenue (IAPR) with a specific digital fingerprint.
Major delivery platforms such as efood and Wolt should report orders to the IAPR. The orders would then be logged, and the company would not be able to delete them from its software because a record of them would remain in the IAPR system.
But there is another, more drastic measure. Orders placed either by telephone or online should be paid for in advance exclusively with electronic money, such as a card or IRIS. In addition, transactions between suppliers and food-service companies should be paid for electronically. Some will, of course, object on grounds of personal freedom; others because they are used to ‘black’ money.
Can these measures be implemented? Certainly, if there is political will. Is there? In part, in our view. Either way, we cannot loudly condemn cases such as Pizza Fan and Choriatiko while refusing to curb digital fraud with targeted measures.