UK Arrests Five For Selling 'Dodgy' Point of Sale Software (theregister.com) 23
Tax authorities from Australia, Canada, France, the UK and the USA have conducted a joint probe into "electronic sales suppression software" -- applications that falsify point of sale data to help merchants avoid paying tax on their true revenue. From a report: A Friday announcement from the Joint Chiefs of Global Tax Enforcement (known as the J5), states that the probe "resulted in the arrest of five individuals in the United Kingdom who allegedly designed and sold electronic sales suppression systems internationally." Those responsible allegedly started to export their wares during the COVID-19 pandemic.
"These dodgy sales suppression tools allow retailers to keep a separate set of books and launder the money in one transaction," explained J5 chief and Australian Taxation Office deputy commissioner John Ford. "They conceal and transfer this income anonymously, sometimes offshore."
"These dodgy sales suppression tools allow retailers to keep a separate set of books and launder the money in one transaction," explained J5 chief and Australian Taxation Office deputy commissioner John Ford. "They conceal and transfer this income anonymously, sometimes offshore."
Death and taxes. (Score:1)
The only things we can always rely on to be with us.
They should also go after NCR (Score:2)
NCR POS software just takes a different tact. The crap is down more than its up, so it can't possibly record accurate info.
Plausable deniability (Score:2)
They should be more creative and create some kind of configuration system or DSL that allows customers to configure these things without explicitly implementing shady features.
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Very common both ways (Score:4, Interesting)
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I wrote the POS system for a chain with about 55 stores and it wouldn't surprise me if they did some things off the books but my software was only dodgy in the sense that I really regret some of the code I wrote back then. I would do a few parts very differently today. Things got really convoluted because there were actually 4 different store chains and they all had different requirements even though they were very similar.
I remember going in one of their stores years after I left and still seeing my so
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Around 20 years ago, there was illegal software that you could install on systems running Squirrel POS (common in restaurant and bars). At the end of the day, you would tell the illegal-ware how much cash you are taking out of the register, and it would go into the (local) Squirrel database and modify it to remove enough sales to make it match up.
I can't find a link to it, but in Quebec it was rampant, and a ton of businesses got caught.
electronic receipts? (Score:1, Offtopic)
We are urging all users of these types of systems to come to us before we come to them.
- talks like a mobster, walks like a mobster....
Itâ(TM)s illegal, and it will not be tolerated here in Australia. Businesses using or promoting this technology are effectively
stealing from the Australian community, and thatâ(TM)s simply not ok.
- well of-course it is illegal, the entire concept of law is such that it allows mobsters that are in charge to wrap any theft into a coat of 'legality'.
Deliberately using electronic sales suppression software to avoid paying taxes on sales is a blatant example of thinking you are bigger than the law.
- obviously the government hates it when someone thinks outside of the box and prevents the theft of taxation.
This kind of activity not only cheats the government
out of taxes owed
- yeah, yeah, yeah, render unto Caesar. Caesar being the one with the biggest gun.
it creates unfair advantages over businesses obeying the law and threatens their ability to make an honest living
- that's a laughable statement. What it *actually* does it promotes the idea that the government taxation is the
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What kind of dodgy business owner would do this? (Score:4)
I mean, I get the arguments about hating to pay taxes, I really do. But if you're a business owner and you purposefully purchased this equipment knowing that you were going to be keeping fake books, underpaying taxes and shuttling funds out to the caymans, you'd have to know that:
Well, I guess if you thought this was a good idea then you probably shouldn't have had the business in the first place and are due all of this trouble and more as a result.
Using software for that is idiotic (Score:4, Interesting)
A business consultant for my old retail shop just suggested we keep a second non-networked register "as a backup" to painlessly keep the end-of-day Z from the main register aligned with the accounting software.
Not that we did, but the fact he casually dropped that into his other business recommendations means it has to be a staggeringly common practice, one that doesn't require using dodgy software to compile a documentary trail of evidence against yourself.
It's $600 now. How soon until ... (Score:2)
All transaction data has to go to the government to VERIFY the seller has paid the correct taxes that match up with the purchase?
https://www.cnbc.com/select/ir... [cnbc.com]
Re: It's $600 now. How soon until ... (Score:3)
Meanwhile, at the Post Office and Fujitsu .... (Score:4, Informative)
... no-one is yet facing arrest for the "dodgy" Horizon software that landed dozens of innocent post-masters in prison, and countless more in debt and even driven to suicide.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/bus... [bbc.co.uk]
Joint Chiefs... (Score:2)
They misspelled Quickbooks... (Score:1)
Hasn't this been the norm for QuickBooks for years? LOL.