alvvayson@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 days ago
It is, but it’s also a very efficient and difficult to evade tax. For many EU countries the VAT revenue is equal or larger than the income tax revenue.
Most Europeans don’t mind it. You can control your spending, so VAT doesn’t hit us in inconvenient ways, like for example, taxes on cars and property.
European countries compensate poor people with good social programs. So in the end, poor people are getting more benefits than the VAT they pay.
Bruncvik@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I agree overall, but VAT is not all that difficult to evade, at least in the service industry. Paying handymen in cash is common in many countries, and that’s a means to evade VAT. Hell, even using them to buy the building or landscaping materials for you (being a registered business they purchase for prices without VAT) saves you on most of the tax. Then there’s service barter. I did it only once, a long time ago, but it can serve as an example: I did family portraits (photography) for my physio, in exchange for a number of physio sessions. If we charged each other, it would have cost each of us, say, 250 Euros, but we’d only see 200 each, and the state would get 100. So, savings of 50 for each of us.
Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de 16 hours ago
That’s not true, sorry. A business pays stuff with VAT included too, but they can later claim back the VAT they paid against the VAT they raised from selling stuff, so they don’t have to hand all of that over.
Bruncvik@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
I’m personally not sure how it works. But when we were upgrading our bathroom, the tile shop added the VAT to the quoted sale price. I then asked a friend of mine who is VAT-registeted to buy it for us, and he got it from the same warehouse for the non-VAT price.
alvvayson@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
Sure, but those are relatively small potatoes.
And if a single person does it a lot, then the tax authorities can easily examine their spending and prove that they are spending more than they are officially earning. And then they can apply punitive measures.