OREANDA-NEWS.  As the latest tax gap report by the European Commission points out, Hungary’s measures against tax fraud and avoidance have been successful: the VAT gap fell by more than 4 percentage points in one year.

The report estimates the Hungary’s VAT gap fell from 22.24 percent in 2013 to 17.95 percent in 2014 – thanks to potent anti-fraud measures by the Government. With this figure, Hungary achieved the third best result in the EU.

The largest contributors to this improvement of more than 4 percentage points were indisputably on-line cash registers, although they became mandatory only in the final four months of 2014 (as of 1 September). In the Ministry’s prediction, data from the year 2015 will be even better, as the Electronic Public Road Trade Control System (EK?ER) was introduced and that was the first year concerning which enterprises were obliged to use only cash registers connected on-line to the tax authority. In 2014, on-line cash registers generated tax revenues of HUF 150-200bn.

The tax authorities of several EU member states have requested information from the Hungarian Tax and Customs Administration (NAV) on regulations of on-line cash registers and EK?ER, planning to introduce similar solutions.