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Ce sera un désastre

November 13, 2009

The Quebec government is cracking down on tax evasion in the restaurant business.

The province's revenue minister has introduced standardized cash registers that must be installed in every restaurant by September 2011.

Fifty restaurants are now testing the electronic devices.

It will cost $32 million to install the machines in the province's 18,000 restaurants, Revenue Minister Robert Dutil said Thursday.

That's $1,778 per restaurant. This surely is a response to the "Zapper" skimming software that electronically hides cash receipts from the tax authorities. Likely results include leaving the register door open for cash transactions, long delays in getting broken registers fixed, and ingenious criminals hacking the new machines.

Things like this should give pause to those who think that a national sales tax would solve the problem of tax evasion.