Perhaps others are as confused as Mike Straka is in regard to why so many sales clerks hand out receipts:

Just keep the receipt, please.

I really don’t need it. I don’t need the coffee receipt. I don’t want the sandwich receipt. I don’t want a receipt unless I ask for it.

Why do some stores insist on giving you a receipt even when you don’t want it?

Many even go so far as to post signs reading: “If we don’t give you a receipt your purchase is free,” or “$5 if we don’t give you a receipt.” Wow, that’s great. But when I buy my $1.51 cup of coffee every morning (it’s NYC, after all), I don’t necessarily want the receipt.

I sent the following to Mr. Straka:

Mike:

As a former auditor who has helped set up internal controls at companies to reduce the risk of employee theft, I smile each time I see one of those signs promising something free if the clerk doesn’t  give us customers a receipt because I know exactly what it’s for.

As you may or may not know, businesses lose much more money from employee theft than from shop-lifters.  A popular technique of stealing is to pocket the customers’ payments and not ring them up on the cash register, which is checked and balanced with the money in the till and the bank deposits.  A store owner can’t be watching every sales transaction to see that all of the money makes it into the till, so they enlist the customers as their “deputies” to ride herd on the clerks. 

This is a similar trick to the request that you write the amount you are sending in with payment coupons for such things as credit cards.  This is meant as a way of preventing the employees who open the mail from changing the amount posted as having been received.

I hope this helps you understand the reasoning behind the requirement to give out receipts  If you ever open a little shop of your own and rely on minimum wage employees, you will be wanting that as a minimum in order to prevent them from augmenting their pay on their own.

Kerry Kerstetter
MBA~CPA~ATP~ATA
Osage, Arkansas  

 

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Q:

Subject: Annual Gift Exclusion

Hello Kerry –

 

I read on your website that the annual gift exclusion will increase to $12,000 in 2006, but I was unable to verify that elsewhere.  Would you mind sharing your source for that information?  We want to make sure the information is solid before using it in our planning models.

 

Thanks very much –

 A:

That came from the same source as the 2006 Federal income tax rates that I posted on my site, CCH.

Gift Tax Annual Exemption

The gift tax annual exemption, which increased by $1,000, to $11,000 in 2002 for the first time since it was indexed for inflation in 1997, will increase to $12,000 for 2006. Pursuant to the IRC, the exemption can rise only when the inflation adjustment would produce an increase of $1,000 or more.

Kerry Kerstetter

 

Follow-Up:

Kerry –

Thank you for the fast response.  It looks like this is still a CCH projection, but I’m guessing that’s fairly reliable.

Thanks again –

 

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