Less-than-perfect accounting records
An audit by the Tax and Customs Administration of the accounts of a hospitality business revealed that the detailed order information had been deleted from the records resulting in the system merely showing the total amounts per order, the order date, the time at which the sale in question had been rung up and the payment method used. This prompted the tax service to conclude that the business owner in question, by failing to keep the detailed information on file, had fallen down on the job where his statutory accounting obligations were concerned.
According to the Bois-le-Duc Court of Appeal, however, the above consideration did not warrant the onus of proof being reversed and added to: the Tax and Customs Administration by comparing the gross profit rates for the business in question and the customary rates for the industry as a whole could have performed a usable check of the correlation between the business’ sourcing and sales transactions. According to the Supreme Court of the Netherlands, any such detailed information as is entered using an automated order and point-of-sale system is to be kept on file where it has taxation relevance, which it would not be regarded as having as long as the accounting system provided sufficient alternative data to enable the sales as reported in cash being reviewed. When all is said and done, minor flaws in the accounting records stop short of warranting the onus of proof being reversed and added to.