Finance ministry promises to expand 'safari' for undeclared assets, incomes in 2017

By G. Kouros

The finance ministry’s continued “safari” to locate and tax undeclared income and assets held in Greece and abroad by alleged tax evaders and Greek citizens using tax avoidance schemes will reportedly rev up from the beginning of the year.

According to reports, the finance ministry will employ an eight-point plan, unveiled recently by the general secretariat for public revenues. The strategy will use electronic cross-checking of domestic and foreign bank transactions of suspected tax cheats; a long-promised use of software to automatically collect taxes and impose liens on property, as well as what’s described as the use of “external” sources to detect assets.   

The outline of the plan was disclosed late last week by the head of the relevant finance ministry’s department, Giorgos Pitsilis, who spoke at an Athens conference on taxation law.

According to the top ministry official, the eight specific measures include:

• Special audits to locate undeclared capital held in banks, using cross-checking.
• Using declared income tax data, along with “external” sources, to better evaluate high-risk instances.
• Finally activating software designed, according to the ministry, to automatically make collections and slap liens on property of suspected tax evading taxpayers or legal entities.
• Improving measures aimed to increase compliance in the declaration of income and the payment of taxes.
• Expanding obligatory electronic transactions.
• Boosting cooperation and information exchange with other EU member-states in order to collect data on assets held outside of the country by Greek citizens.
• A new procedure to identify and categorize so-called major debtors to the state, based on an analysis of their current personal and business finances, in order to determine a taxpayer’s capacity to cover debts or a commercial entity’s viability.
• A new system to manage tax cases in the direction of avoiding legal action and subsequent long-drawn out court proceedings, where possible.