Fully 59% of the survey’s respondents said they typically encounter tax avoidance when paying for household repair and maintenance services, such as plumbing, building work or cleaning.

This generally entails failure to receive invoices and receipts. Nézőpont found that retail outlets fail to provide customers with receipts 53% of the time while hospitality and catering outlets fail to give receipts 19% of the time. The survey revealed that most people consider the use of electronic payment systems effective in tackling fraud.

Fully 88% of respondents said they were satisfied with the electronic payment opportunities available to them. Domestic purchases made with electronic cards grew by 22.1% in Q1 this year compared with the same period in 2015, according to central bank data.

Fully 79% of Nézőpont’s respondents said they regularly pay by bank card in supermarkets or shopping malls. However, only 36% tend to pay by bank card in convenience stores and 21% in the hospitality sector. A mere 5% said they regularly use a bank card to pay for services like haircuts or taxi rides.

Fully 53% said the installation of online cash registers linking retail shops directly to tax authority NAV’s system was an effective way of encouraging retailers to provide receipts. Forty-five percent said electronic road tolls were effective in tackling VAT fraud.

However, 13-15% of respondents said these systems were not yet robust enough. They opined that high-income professionals such as lawyers, dentists or plastic surgeons should also be required to use online cash registers.

The survey was conducted between May 2 and 18 with a sample of 1,000 adults by Nézőpont’s Economic Whitening Roundtable, which includes representatives of the State Audit Office, the National Bank of Hungary, MKB Bank, the economy ministry and the Central Statistical Office.

Republished with permission of Hungary Matters, MTI’s daily newsletter.