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Full-Text Articles in Criminal Law
Zappers - Retail Vat Fraud, Richard Thompson Ainsworth
Zappers - Retail Vat Fraud, Richard Thompson Ainsworth
Faculty Scholarship
Zappers skim cash sales at retail. Zappers are add-on programs used by merchants with electronic cash registers (ECRs) or point-of-sale (POS) systems. Zappers are smart and selective. They do not skim all sales, and they never skim credit card transactions.
Although they are present in every jurisdiction, Zappers appear to be most widely used in developed economies that combine high levels of cash sales with high rates of consumption tax. Sweden, for example, has a cash-intensive economy, one of the world’s highest VAT rates (25%), and also reports that 70% of the ECRs in the country are either “… constructed …
Tax Fraud In The Sales Tax: Zappers -- What Are They? How Can Puerto Rico Block Them?, Richard Thompson Ainsworth
Tax Fraud In The Sales Tax: Zappers -- What Are They? How Can Puerto Rico Block Them?, Richard Thompson Ainsworth
Faculty Scholarship
The Sales and Use Tax is an essential part of Puerto Rico’s revenue profile. Effective only recently (November 15, 2006) the Impuesto a las Ventas y Uso (IVU) was expected to raise between $2.3 and $1.05 billion annually, and has already become the Commonwealth’s fourth largest revenue source. Actual revenue results for 2007-2008 came in at $1.1 billion, which admittedly is closer to the low end than the high end of what is possible, but now that the tax is in place the next pressing question is how can its performance be improved?
This paper generally proposes that Puerto Rico …
California Zappers: A Proposal For The Commission For The 21st Century Economy, Richard Thompson Ainsworth
California Zappers: A Proposal For The Commission For The 21st Century Economy, Richard Thompson Ainsworth
Faculty Scholarship
California has not uncovered a single instance of technology-assisted cash skimming - there are no zappers, and no phantomware in California. Is this because Californians are not skimming cash sales with technology, or is this because the California technology works so well that the fraud cannot be detected?
The record in foreign jurisdictions is reasonable clear. Automated sales suppression technology is widely used to skim cash sales, denying the state revenues from consumption taxes that have been paid by the consumer, reducing taxable business profits, and funding a cash hoard out of which unreported employee wages are paid. Government studies …