There is more and more interest in Hungarian inventions aimed at the whitening of the economy. The thorough studying of these solutions was in the focus of the three-day Budapest visit of a high-level delegation consisting of executives of the Saudi Arabian tax authority. The visit ended on Wednesday, Norbert Izer, Minister of State for Tax Affairs informed the Hungarian news agency MTI.

Despite the ongoing reduction of taxes, state revenues are continuously on the rise, and one of the chief explanations for this seeming contradiction is the whitening of the economy which even the European Commission highlighted when it recognised in its study on the so-called tax gap that there is a need for the Hungarian inventions against VAT fraud, Mr Izer explained.

According to the Minister of State, news of our successful fight against the black economy is now reaching ever more distant countries. This year, the effect of the Hungarian online cash register system, whose mission is to whiten the economy, has even aroused Columbia’s interest. The Greeks studied the system in April, and therefore we cannot rule out that soon Greek shopkeepers could punch their revenues into cash registers operating according to the Hungarian system. This time, Saudi Arabia – a country with a completely different budgetary structure – is showing interest in our online solutions, the Minister of State stressed.

“While in Hungary the National Tax and Customs Administration secures 95 per cent of the budget’s state revenues through the collection of taxes, in the Asian country 80 per cent of budgetary revenues are derived from the export of crude oil. Saudi Arabia introduced Value Added Tax only last year,” Mr Izer said.

Suhail Abanmi, head of the Saudi tax authority said the goal is not only for economic actors to pay the State the VAT introduced in 2018, but equally for the Saudi tax authority to help taxpayers with digital services which make the fulfilment of tax payment obligations as easy and convenient as possible.

According to Mr Izer, Hungary’s results are convincing as in Hungary the tax gap – meaning VAT revenues not actually collected by the State – fell from 22 per cent in 2012 to 13 per cent in 2016, and given the excellent performance of Hungary’s “economy-whitening miracle weapons” (the online cash register, the electronic system of road goods transportation controls and the online invoice), the rate of tax evasion could fall to below 10 per cent next year.

(Ministry of Finance/MTI)