Crackdown on businesses finds 33 mln euros in hidden revenues

Ramped-up inspections on businesses across the country are bringing results at the Independent Authority for Public Revenue (AADE), which issued a progress report on Tuesday outlining its performance from the start of the year until October 31.

According to the report, AADE carried out 67,000 inspections in that period, 31% of which yielded breaches of the tax law. It reported a total of 1.4 million violations, coming to 33 million euros of undeclared revenues and losses to state coffers worth 7 million euros stemming from uncollected value-added tax.

Many of the violations concerned money paid to businesses electronically for which proper receipts were never issued.

The operating licenses of 830 businesses were suspended for 48 hours and 170 businesses were fined. All 170 were hotels, which are protected from closure because of the nature of their work. 

According to AADE’s report, part of its success was due to the expansion of its inspections on businesses outside the region where they are headquartered as well as on the ability to cross-reference information between different digital platforms and the receipts from electronic transactions.