The Best of GRReporter
flag_bg flag_gr flag_gb

There is no chance for us to receive a receipt from a neighborhood gas station

30 January 2010 / 10:01:00  GRReporter
2492 reads

Victoria Mindova

 

The private owners of the neighborhood gas stations believe that the introduction of special petrol pumps that will account for the turnover and which will be registered for taxation is a very expensive and unnecessary act. 20 – 30 thousand euro is the price of one of these pumps and the owners of small gas stations are against the installation of such devices for accounting purposes. The reason is that the investment is quite too big and the Ministry of finance would not take the responsibility for the funding of such a change. Currently the collection of the taxes from the private owners was done by levying duty on the purchased quantity of petrol (no matter when it will be sold) and not on the volume of the sales or the profit. This makes it possible under the current law for the gas station owners to only issue a receipt when they wish to do so. A speculative price increase is a problem which the private owners expect in case that the government decides to change the current legal framework of the fuels trade.

“An eventual change in the taxation methods would neutralize the profit of the gas stations which is anyways already thinner. The incomes from the sale of fuels recently is only enough to cover our expenses,” complains an owner of a small neighborhood gas station. “The prices at which we purchase the fuels are set by the importing oil refineries. Every morning they give us the price of the quantity purchased for the day,” explains the entrepreneur. The end prices are formed by the owners of gas stations themselves, which explains the great differences in the prices of one liter of gas in the various gas stations. For gas stations which are further or are not in some place with high traffic, the suppliers can make some discounts after negotiations. 

The case of the chain gas stations, which are owned by the biggest import – processing companies is completely different. There is already introduced a single system for electronic tax accounting of the sales which is part of the control policy for the companies. “Almost nobody wants a receipt. Only about 20% of the clients who fill their tanks would require one. They pay and they leave. This whole story about the nontaxable minimum and the collection of receipts is just throwing dust in the eyes of the people,” commented an employee of such gas station regarding the new measure of the PASOK government, which is part of the reform of the Ministry of finance. She adds: “You will see that at the end of the taxation year 2010 nothing of what was promised will be done. The people already don’t trust the politicians – not the ones on the right nor the ones on the left. Whatever they would tell them it wouldn’t matter and it would have no value.” “No Greek government would introduce a price ceiling on the (wholesale) fuels,” commented the idea for a governmental control on the fuel prices and adds: “The political price would be much too high.”

Picture: www.zougla.gr

Tags: petrol receipt MarketsEconomy
SUPPORT US!
GRReporter’s content is brought to you for free 7 days a week by a team of highly professional journalists, translators, photographers, operators, software developers, designers. If you like and follow our work, consider whether you could support us financially with an amount at your choice.
Subscription
You can support us only once as well.
blog comments powered by Disqus