[dcustodio]

Years ago the Portuguese government encouraged consumers to submit their receipts in a portal and each submitted receipt was a entry to a raffle where the prizes were luxury cars. This way they could match the receipts from consumers with the ones reported by the shops. It felt wrong to put citizens policing the shops but it worked.

[endorphone]

I remember visiting Italy and we were warned repeatedly to always take and keep receipts, even if just getting a gelato -- that after the transaction the police could demand it, with punitive measures if you don't have it. This system was to ensure that shopkeepers were actually keeping receipts.

The GST/HST system in Canada sort of serves the same purpose. It is an overarching tax system that seems redundant in that every business then can claim back every bit of GST they've paid out. But to do so you have to have receipts for everything, from every source, and when they randomly do an audit they aren't checking you as much as they're building a profile of every other business you interacted with.

Tax avoidance is a problem in every country.

[breischl]

At a different level that's part of the reason receipts exist, and why you occasionally see things like "if we don't give you a receipt your order is free."

In those cases it's typically about preventing the employees from not ringing up the sale and just pocketing the cash. The receipt proves that the order was entered into the system. Same idea, just a difference of who's stealing from whom.

Hm, I suppose that scam is less of a problem in the era of credit cards.

[kaybe]

Taiwan does that too. If you leave the country you can drop them off at one of the charity boxes using it for income.

[jonathanstrange]

The system still in place, if I'm not totally mistaken. (I haven't checked, because I usually don't give away my tax number for sheer laziness - I still don't know it by heart.)

[severak_cz]

we have something similar in Czech republic. It's called Účtenkovka (receipt lottery) and some con men discovered it and started their scams there.