Norway Tax Auditors Want To Open Source Cash Registers To Combat Fraud

Qedward writes "The Norwegian Ministry of Finance seems to be taking a bit of stick at the moment. It wants all the existing cash registers in the country thrown out and replaced with new ones. Not surprisingly, this massive upgrade is not popular. But it is apparently being pushed through in an attempt to prevent cash registers' figures being massaged downwards in use so as to reduce tax. The Norwegian association of tax auditors said: 'The source code must be opened.' 'Without source code it is not possible to determine whether or "hidden" functionality exists or not. Just knowing that the tax authorities have access to the source code of the application, will reduce the effort to implement hidden functionality in the software.'"

Comments

Re:Of course, It begs the question...

[whoever57]

I had a friend who installed POS systems in small businesses for a living. At restaurants, the most important feature of any POS system was the ability to make a table disappear out of the records.

Re:Just releasing the source may not fix it

[Anonymous Coward]

Are there examples of cash registers which are running code which have illegal, hidden functionality?

Oh yes; here in Sweden there was registers that had hidden features that could be activated in order to reduce the reported sums/amount of transactions by the users choice. Typically used in restaurants/bars. Since a couple of years all registers have to certified and connected to a 'black box' supplied by our equivalent to the IRS.
There was also frequent manipulation of the meters in taxis.

Re:Of course, It begs the question...

[Interfacer]

Far from dodgy companies. This is a common feature in many (all?) cash registers used in small business, especially restaurants.
I know people who work in restaurants, and they told me that this is a public secret.

The way it works is that at the end of the day, you can make the register change the numbers by an amount or a percent. Ther register will then do the math to change the number of coffees served and muffins sold and things like that. It does this so that the numbers still make sense and correlate with expected ratios.
At that point, the business day is closed, the register is printed, and you get some money out of the till under the table. If the inspectors should come in during the day, you can just print whatever the current status is, which will then be immutable at the end of the business day to avoid discrepancies.

This functionality is not advertized in writing, but all sales persons know about it and know how they can explain this to the owners. All major registers have features like this, and I can understand why the inspectors would require open source. Because skimming money becomes an order of magnitude more difficult if you don't have a register to help you create a phony audit trail.

Re:How exactly are the 'massaging' the numbers?

[vlad30]

10-15 years ago I also wrote some POS software and it opened my eyes to the way many cash businesses operate. I was asked specifically to add by many of the businesses to add a "reduction feature" which I politely refused to do I would say 80% of potential sales were lost for this one reason. On competitor software they often demonstrated this feature would delete a percentage of completed cash transaction before the End of Month commit and rollover so auditing the data would show nothing this was so pervasive the owners of a franchise with at the time 350 + franchisees also requested it

On the other hand business who bought and used my software found much of their income was being fudged by employees usually through cancelled transactions. When a customer pulls out cash and says no receipt necessary the transaction is cancelled an the cash pocketed.