THE NATIONAL Receipt Lottery launched last September has fulfilled expectations for now, Martin Filko, head of the Financial Policy Institute (IFP), told the press on May 12. Since the potential positive impact of the state-receipt lottery on annual value-added tax income is €7-8 million and with the expected annual spending on marketing and prizes at €2 million, the yield of the lottery is four-fold, he added.
Analysts with the Finance Ministry based their evaluation of the impacts of the lottery on VAT incomes on comparing the annual VAT yield between the third and fourth quarters of 2013, the periods shortly before and after the introduction of the lottery, the TASR newswire wrote.
“The improvement of VAT collection achieved this year therefore was, with big probability, the result of several measures, and it is not easy to quantify the impact of the lottery itself,” reads the IFP report, as quoted by the SITA newswire, adding that with more data they will probably be able to identify the impacts more precisely.
Filko however said that the lottery’s impact on VAT collection was rather a secondary priority. The first priority was to motivate the public to ask for VAT receipts and check them. Moreover, the lottery helped open a discussion over measures aimed at improving the effectiveness of tax collection, as reported by SITA.
Nearly 65 million VAT receipts from 450,000 people worth €780 million were registered for the lottery between its launch in September 2013 and the 15th drawing in April. More than seven million receipts – a record number - were registered with the very first round of the drawing. Since the beginning of 2014 the number of receipts in the lottery has stabilised to about three million.
Most of the registered receipts were issued by retail stores, especially big retail chains. The IFP is currently working on possible improvements that may also increase the number of receipts from smaller shops. Another way to boost people’s interest in the lottery may be the registration of invoices, and the IFP is also considering improving the analytical work it conducts with the data provided by the lottery, as reported by SITA.
Source: TASR, SITA
Compiled by Radka Minarechová from press reports
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