• VAT reduction: Treuhand appeals to pharmacies

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  Adjust prices! The trustee warns the pharmacists of damage to their image. Photo: Marcus Witte

  Berlin - This week, the Bundestag decides to lower VAT to 16 or 5 percent. The tax consultancy Treuhand Hannover recommends that pharmacies pass the relief on to customers. Otherwise there would be an “immense” damage to the image if the customers found out that the owners put the tax gift in their own pocket to stimulate the economy after the Corona crisis. For most pharmacies, the trustee sees no problems with the changeover because this is done automatically by modern ERP systems.

   

Wherever the pharmacy can calculate prices freely, it has to consider whether it wants to pass on the sales tax reduction to patients or “takes advantage of the higher net sales price for itself”. With sales of several thousand packages and an advantage of around 20 cents per package, "a respectable amount would come together," wrote the Treuhand. "Experience has shown that the loss of image is immense if the customer 'finds out' that the pharmacy does not pass on the reduction." It can be expected that there will be a high price sensitivity among customers, especially for indicator products. “Therefore, these items should be handled with care. The rumor of the 'pharmacy prices' should otherwise solidify again. "

In order to avoid "crooked" prices, the pharmacy managers should check the rounding system stored in the computer, recommends the trust. If these are stored properly, the new prices should also be appropriate for marketing purposes. According to the trust, some pharmacists are considering keeping the "old" prices and only pointing out the deduction of the lower sales tax at the cash register. "We doubt whether this is permissible within the framework of the price information regulation", said the trust and advises to accept the effort of a price change. Anyone who has an electronic labeling system should be "out of here - everyone else should plan time for re-labeling".

In its recommendations, Treuhand recalls the last big sales tax change on January 1, 2007: "The sales tax increase did a lot of work in the pharmacy: calculate, print lists, remove labels, re-label." In the meantime, the modern POS merchandise management systems have made a lot of data changes become easier. Nevertheless, the coming sales tax cut on July 1 will cause some work in the pharmacies. "First of all, a pharmacy with a modern IT system and good data maintenance will have little problem with the changeover. POR companies with paper labels, hand taxation, typewriter bills etc. will take a lot of time and nerves in the next few weeks, ”said the Treuhand.