How to hack national VAT lotteries
Taiwan is having to rethink its VAT receipt prize draw after it become clear tax fraudsters were gaming the system. The fortnightly lottery gives prizes of up to TWD 10million based on the invoice numbers of retail receipts that consumers receive. This encourages the shoppers to insist on proper recording of retail transactions and so curb fraud be retailers.
The National Audit Office has highlighted cases of consumers winning the lottery many hundreds of times be contriving to “a large number of small uniform invoices in an unconventional manner.” This includes purchasing large numbers of plastic bags at just TWD 1 each.
The Ministry of Finance is now proposing the some minimum spend limit is set on the draw, or large number of low-value transactions are blocked.
Many other countries run VAT invoice lotteries, including: India, Greece; Portugal; Latvia, Malta, Slovakia and Italy.
