Tax office heads liable for any rebate delays

Tax office heads will be liable for any tax rebate delays of over 90 days, the general secretary for public revenues, Haris Theoharis, has told tax authorities, as delays over three months will entail the payment of interest by the state.

This order and the general restructuring of the tax administration since the end of April appear to have been showing some results recently: Last week 140 million euros of value-added tax returns were paid to enterprises and self-employed professionals, reducing the amount of outstanding VAT rebates to 840 million. The aim is for this amount to be cut to near-zero by the end of the year.

Tax authority directors will have to answer to the political administration of the Finance Ministry and they will even face transfer elsewhere should they be found to have forced the state to pay any interest to taxpayers.

Now that the monitoring criteria have changed, the rebate procedures have become much faster, the head of one tax office told Kathimerini. He added that the ministry should see to it that tax office staff numbers are increased in order to serve taxpayers even faster.