Receipts aren’t the only issue. Take something as simple as a family restaurant, a purchase of say rice may look completely legit but if the family takes it home for personal use then that’s not a business expense. It’s hard to track that stuff down, but misclassification is the most common form of tax fraud rather than falsified records which simply take more effort.
Complete myth that those things are what makes the companies bleed money. It's like when people said we have remove paper money because small coffee shops in italy don't report their earnings. Added it's hard to imagine that those stores steel more money than Starbucks.
And just in case you come back with a calculation on the estimated number of coffee shops in italy compared to just Starbucks. Starbucks is obviously just of the institutionalized crooks.
This discussion is basically the same as guilt tripping peoples straw usage when the biggest offender is obviously the plastic industry.
I think you misunderstood the example, classification of marketing as R&D spending for a tax break is the equivalent. This isn’t about people stealing office pens, this is about people falsifying internal records for tax savings.
