By G. Palaitsakis
[email protected]
Data on taxpayers' deposits in Greek banks cannot be designated as "supplementary information" in efforts, by authorities, to prove the existence of undisclosed income if five years have passed from the start of an investigation, according to a recent ruling by the Council of Stat (Cos), Greece's highest administrative court.
Otherwise, the CoS argument goes, the statue of limitations for such tax cases could be extended from five to 10 years.
Essentially, the high court limits the state's right to investigate a large number of tax cases that arose in the 2006-2010 period.
On the other hand, tax authorities' right to investigate tax cases dating from 2006-2010 and related to individual taxpayers whose details were listed on various lists of Greek citizens with major bank deposits overseas - the so-called "Lagarde list" and "Borjans list", for instance - is not affected.
In practical terms, the CoS ruling means that Greek authorities - especially the memorandum-mandated and newly created independent public revenues authority - cannot probe income that was ostensibly not declared prior to 2010.
Tax authorities are in possession of a massive amount of information on transactions of Greek bank accounts that contained at least 300,000 euros between the 2000-2012 period. This data, contained in no less than 65 CDs, has been under investigation by Greece's often slow-moving public sector - in this case tax authorities - for the past four years.
