Up to 30 euros

Companies no longer want to issue receipts

70% of all payments are less than 10 euros. Customers must still receive an invoice and, by law, keep it until they leave the store.

(Bild: Peter Tomschi)

Whether it's a little brownie, an ice cream cone or a haircut, businesses have had to issue a receipt even for invoices over a few euros since the introduction of the cash register obligation. Many sectors now want this to only be mandatory for invoices over 30 euros. This is intended to reduce the bureaucratic burden.

Most of us don't even look at the receipt after a small purchase or a visit to the pub and throw it away straight away. A good 70 percent of all payments relate to bills of less than ten euros. In total, however, around 560,000 kilometers of receipts are printed each year just for these small amounts. This requires 2950 tons of wood or 2,000 spruce trees - not exactly environmentally friendly, according to the Wirtschaftsbund. However, business people are particularly annoyed by the bureaucratic burden. According to the survey, 57 percent of them want the general obligation to issue receipts to be abolished and only require invoices for amounts over 30 euros. Since the introduction of electronic cash registers in 2016, sales have been transparent for the tax authorities anyway. The obligation to always issue an invoice, which was also decided at the time, would therefore be unnecessary and annoying. According to the Wirtschaftsbund, 56 percent of the population are also in favor of ending the paper-based system. After all, according to the law, consumers actually have to keep the bill until they leave the store - after all, there could still be a financial check outside.

560,000 kilometers of receipts per year
However, the deeper background to the current initiative against the flood of paper is that businesses as a whole feel overwhelmed by too much bureaucracy. Large companies could now save time and money by sending invoices via a cell phone app, for example, while small companies are left to deal with the paperwork.

Trade representative Renate Scheichelbauer-Schuster: "We want to do our job, and that's that!"

(Bild: Foto Lagler)

"We want to do our work and do it in the best possible way, and that's that," demands Renate Scheichelbauer-Schuster, representative of the Chamber of Commerce for local trade and craft businesses. 

Bureaucracy costs businesses and tradespeople 4.3 billion euros
According to a new study, these sectors alone have to spend more than 69 million working hours a year on bureaucratic tasks. This corresponds to the work of 42,190 full-time employees or a total of 6.6 percent of total personnel capacity. In times of a shortage of skilled workers, this is no longer sustainable, according to Scheichelbauer-Schuster. And the regulations are not only constantly increasing, they are also becoming more expensive. The administrative effort already costs 2.6 billion euros internally, i.e. mainly in working time. Added to this are costs for tax consultants, payroll accountants etc. of a further 1.7 billion. These combined costs of 4.3 billion euros already "eat up" 3.3 percent of the total commercial turnover of just under 130 billion euros.