EKIP– Expert Club for Economics and Politics A Different Opinion
Author: Vesselin Pashov
On 28.09.2018. the updated Regulation H18 concerning cash registers was published in the next issue of the State Gazette. In relation to fiscal devices, structural changes are being introduced concerning manufacturers of such products, which, generally speaking, will lead to information being sent every 5 minutes from the devices to the NRA servers. The first available fiscal devices were released on 12.12.2018 by three of the four leading manufacturing companies, and on 20.12. devices were released by the fourth. As of 28.03.2019, there are 63 fiscal devices and fiscal printers in the registers of BIM (Bulgarian Institute of Metrology). Six of these devices are from three manufacturers, the remaining 56 are from the leading manufacturers of fiscal devices with the largest market share in Bulgaria.
So far, nothing new, in 2011-2012, when there was the last mass campaign to replace businesses' fiscal devices due to amendments to Regulation H18, the situation was similar.
New features in the technical characteristics of the devices are generally: sending information about completed sales within 5 minutes from the FU to the NRA server, blocking the FU if there is no connection with the NRA server for more than 24 hours, which raises questions about the reliability of the mobile operator network, the range of the mobile operator networks and possible dysfunction of the NRA servers. Remember that we witnessed in the summer of 2018 how there was no functioning Commercial Register.
What will happen if the server activity is accidentally or intentionally blocked? Well, very simply, everyone will have to go back to writing manual receipts, which will be re-marked when the server appears or the mobile operator's network becomes available to the mobile device. Then you will be able to continue your trading process peacefully.
Are you asking yourself what does this matter to me? Does it affect me? Well... if we go back to simple cash payment without needing an accounting document, it might not affect us, but if you are a company and you want the NRA to recognize the expense for you later, hmm, it affects you. If you want the insurer to recognize repaired damage to the car on an invoice and you have decided to pay cash, this will be a problem for you. This also applies to people with property and health insurance. Even your personal doctor cannot issue the necessary documents such as an outpatient certificate, your diagnosis and the hospital bill, because his fiscal device and software are blocked due to some dysfunction of the mobile operators or the NRA servers.
This applies to transportation, hospitals, retail chains, malls, parking lots, snack bars, restaurants that we visit every day. Paying with a card through a POS terminal is still considered a cashless transaction subject to the issuance of a fiscal receipt, so it may be a good alternative to a postal order, Easypay, MoneyGram cash desks or the Bank in the mall to pay for your new clothes, lunch and utilities.
The innovations in the 2018 regulation do not stop at the technical details of the hardware. A registration regime and requirements for software are introduced in both physical and virtual retail outlets. In general, it can be noted that the texts in the regulation are written as flexibly as possible and with the possibility of a broader interpretation, which leads to misunderstanding and controversial moments when building the software.
Along with the misleading requirements for the software, there is a clear desire for access to specific information requiring discretion, even intellectual property, both for the programmers and for a unique recipe for a cake for a family bakery. And what about the patient files? Should they also be available to the NRA?
I quote the regulation: Art. 52c, para. 2, item 3:
"for software that is installed in the client's environment, the following shall be provided: a complete description of the objects in the database (DB) related to sales management, including tables and their purpose, relationships between them, a description of the fields in the tables, as well as an executable file and the source code from which the executable file was generated, for accessing and retrieving data from the DB in a structured, readable form with the option to choose - from all or part of the tables that the software works with;"
The administration is wagging the finger at software manufacturers for wasting their time since September 28, 2018 in procrastination, but that is not the case. Let's start with the fact that every activity has a production cycle. It starts with the presence of clear rules in this case set by the administration, which are missing, without any idea of the deadlines for implementation. Planning for the production of a prototype, production of the prototype and testing, if necessary, it is refined, goes through BIM, if it is legalized, it is put into mass production. Software companies can also take risks with prototypes of fiscal devices, but they will necessarily have to wait for legalization and fiscalize a new fiscal device in order to complete their production cycle of writing software.
As of March 25, 2019, 52 software programs are available in the NRA registers, and you will mostly find those for the grocery store, the neighborhood restaurant, and the store. The regulation seems to equate all commercial establishments to the size of the types listed in the previous sentence. Hotels, hospitals, clinics, gas stations, businesses with specialized versions or a software product written entirely for them serving their needs and their customers, are somehow placed under a common denominator.
The circus does not end here. The Minister of Finance "gave" programmers and businesses a little more time until 30.09.2019 to bring the requirements of Regulation H18, a proposal that was promulgated on 29.03, so that it does not turn out that from 01.04 many commercial establishments are in violation and the tax authorities will write acts with fines from 5000 to 15,000 leva, for a second offense 5000 to 20,000 and closure and sealing for 30 days, during which the establishment cannot carry out activities.
This promulgation, in addition to extending the deadline, paradoxically led to new amendments to the regulation, which are available on over 260 pages of the draft on the Council of Ministers website. Ultimately, we will find out the final texts very soon and it will be interesting to see whether programmers and designers will not start work from scratch.
Maybe because the regulation was written as a part of a Dunning-Kruger effect study, that's why. It's impossible to convince a bureaucrat that business processes in a modern commercial company are much more complex and diverse than those in a neighborhood store, restaurant or cafe, and that the software that manages this entire process is not a simple set of familiar Excel formulas. Since they said they would fight the gray sector and since it is known that it all started with the empty issuance of official receipts in restaurants, why didn't they simply prohibit cash register manufacturers from having a similar option in fiscal devices? They wanted QR codes - fine, let them be - it still depends on the device manufacturers. They wanted connectivity with archaic fiscal printers - fine, and that's possible, although not practical. From here on, everything else is complete nonsense and only shows the lack of elementary knowledge in the administration that manages our taxes. Even ignorance of tax legislation, since the regulation itself creates conflicts with other tax regulations. All this is very sad, but there is also a funny side - the changes will not force the gray sector to whiten. They can only infuriate white companies.