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(Dec. 15/09) Despite demands from CRFA for fairer means to fight fiscal evasion, restaurants will have to issue a receipt for all transactions and install a sales registry module (SRM) at each point-of-sale (POS) station, starting next fall.
This regulation follows Revenue Quebec’s claims of losing more than $400 million a year in unpaid taxes, often by zappers in cash registers that divert sales from the books.
The problem with SRM
Over the last three years, CRFA’s Council of Chain Restaurants: Quebec (CCRQ) has argued it will be difficult, costly and almost unmanageable to install SRM systems in the province’s 20,000 restaurants.
To accommodate an SRM, systems have to be upgraded at a cost of $4,000 to $7,000 per restaurant, depending on its number of cash registers. For a chain with 50 or more restaurants, SRM installation will cost a lot – an unfair expense for law-abiding establishments.
CCRQ’s position is if such systems are the solution, they should only be installed in restaurants already found guilty of fiscal evasion. Additional human resources, stiffer fines and permit suspension, if needed, should have been considered.
Furthermore, this solution unfairly targets restaurants. Foodservice is the only retail channel subjected to these costly and cumbersome rules.
Earlier this month, Quebec Revenue Minister Robert Dutil launched the pilot project to curb fiscal evasion in 45 restaurants. Scheduled to run until the spring of 2010, the project tests the ministry’s proposed solution. Dutil also tabled Bill 64 that includes a ‘Restaurants’ section with details on fighting fiscal evasion in the industry. Only bars will be excluded from this legislation because they do not sell food.
“The ministry’s solution means honest restaurateurs will have to pay to install systems to catch the few that have been cheating for a number of years,” says CRFA’s Quebec Vice President, Jean Lefebvre. “The solution is absolutely unfair and unwarranted. It is like using a machine gun to kill a fly.”
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