Preventing post-lockdown tax evasion

The tax administration is set to focus its inspection activity this year on probing cases involving a high degree of violation of tax laws and transactions within the European Union, upon the orders of a prosecutor.

The aim of the Independent Authority for Public Revenue (IAPR) is to bolster the budget’s revenues as well as to prevent taxpayers from hiding taxable material ahead of the reopening of the market.

The Finance Ministry and the tax administration are worried about extensive tax evasion in sectors prone to law violation, once the lockdown is over, so they have already started preparing inspection strategy, sending a message to inspectors to cover the entire country.

IAPR director Giorgos Pitsilis has ordered the Inspection and Public Revenue Safeguarding Agency to implement 10,720 targeted inspections and 6,000 spot checks.

The prioritized cases for monitoring are ranked per inspection agency, but this is based on an automatic model of objective assessment of cases following the application of risk analysis criteria.

Priority will be placed on cases in the last five years and those spotted in sectors with a high record on violation.