Germany Has A New Receipt Law — And Bakeries Are Getting Sweet Revenge

Enlarge this image toggle caption Tobias Hase/picture alliance via Getty Images Tobias Hase/picture alliance via Getty Images

A new law has taken effect in Germany that requires receipts to be issued at businesses such as restaurants, bakeries, hairdressers, no matter how small the transaction.

It's known as Kassengesetz, or "cash register law": a law for protection against the manipulation of digital records. The measure is meant to increase transparency and prevent tax fraud. The idea is to log each transaction in a format that can be reviewed and verified.

Many of these businesses — and their customers — have taken umbrage at the new requirement, but none has done so more deliciously than the country's beloved bakeries.

In some towns in Bavaria, in southern Germany, some bakeries are incorporating the receipts into the goods themselves. The Bäckerei Ways in Moosinning has begun peddling Kassenbon Krapfen — receipt doughnuts. The pastries are slathered with pink icing and then topped with a receipt made of fondant, tax included.

Enlarge this image toggle caption Daniel Karmann/picture alliance via Getty Images Daniel Karmann/picture alliance via Getty Images

The Streicher bakery in Grosshabersdorf had the same idea. "Edible and not hazardous waste," baker Roland Streicher told inFranken.de.

Despite its verisimilitude, the sugary doppelgänger doesn't count: A regular receipt still has to be generated.

Businesses must provide a receipt, but customers aren't obligated to take it. Some bakeries have begun collecting the receipts from customers in a growing pile in the shop window, a visible reminder of displeasure with the new policy.

At the Gasthaus Gutenberg restaurant in Karlsruhe, the proprietors took that idea a step further, stringing receipts in a garland crisscrossing the room.

There is in fact no requirement to issue paper receipts in particular. Businesses can issue receipts by email or cellphone. But Germany is still a notoriously cash-based society, making those options unpopular. Companies also aren't required to use an electronic recording system (in which case they are not obligated to issue a receipt), but they still need to keep complete and orderly records.

Enlarge this image toggle caption Sina Schuldt/picture alliance via Getty Images Sina Schuldt/picture alliance via Getty Images

Many critics of the law point to the huge amounts of waste generated by issuing all those receipts. Receipts are often made of thermal paper coated in chemicals that shouldn't be recycled.

A German trade association estimated that all those compulsory receipts will generate enough paper each year to wrap around the world 50 times.

So the controversial law could be good for other enterprises, like the small company Ökobon: It makes organic receipt paper.