In black and white (and grey)

‘40 shades of grey’ was the title of the roundtable discussion on VAT fraud, organised by the Chain Bridge Club on 11 March.

The moderator was Zoltán Tóth, managing partner of MindZ Business Design, who in his keynote speech told that the black economy’s size was 24 percent of Hungary’s GDP in 2010 and is estimated to have been 17 percent of the GDP last year. In the European Union about EUR 193 billion of VAT remained unpaid in 2011 – for Hungary EUR 3.7 billion worth of VAT was estimated to be missing from the budget. The roundtable discussion revealed that the food industry hopes for government help to find those who commit the frauds in the sector. Honest actors in the sector want tax laws that can be kept and the keeping of which can be controlled by the authorities. It was also mentioned that whitening the black economy would result in elevated grocery prices. This may be one of the reasons why the authorities didn’t act with adequate force yet.