Low tax declaration submission rate to force deadline extension

The Finance Ministry looks likely to extend the deadline for the submission of this year’s income tax declarations – currently June 30 – as millions of taxpayers have not yet done so.

Sources say the ministry is examining the extension of the submission cutoff date by 22 days for ordinary taxpayers and 10 days for enterprises. Therefore the deadline will be July 22 for individual taxpayers and July 12 for companies.

According to the figures of the General Secretariat for Public Revenues, 3.85 million tax statements for 2015 incomes had been filed on its online Taxisnet platform up until Thursday. For the process to be completed, over 6 million statements have to be submitted. That means some 2.2 million taxpayers have not yet filled in their declarations.

The main reason the ministry has to stretch its timetable is because the Taxisnet system would have to receive some 310,000 declarations per day until next Thursday for the deadline to be met, but that figure is simply prohibitive for the online platform, which cannot handle any more than 150,000-160,000 statement on a daily basis.

The secretariat’s data show that June 22 was the day with the highest number of declarations submitted to date, when the number hit 151,249, following public calls by Alternate Minister Tryfon Alexiadis to that effect.

Out of the 3.85 million statements filed, 1,304,861, or just over a third (33.88 percent), will entail additional tax payments by taxpayers, totaling 1.47 billion euros, or 1,128 euros each. The taxpayers who will have to make additional payments on top of the deductions that have already been made to salaries and pensions over the course of 2015 will have to pay in three bimonthly installments, starting in end-July. The second tranche will be due by September 30 and the third by November 30.

A total of 681,542 taxpayers have received or are due to get a tax rebate notice. That rebate totals 183.18 million euros, or 268 euros each on average. However, those who have entered a ministry payment program or are property owners will not receive a tax rebate as that will be taken to offset their debts to the state or their next Single Property Tax (ENFIA) payment.

Almost half of the statements submitted to date (48.42 percent) entail neither rebates nor extra tax payments.

The processing of the tax declarations is expected to bring a total of 1.28 billion euros into state coffers. As soon as this process is over, the secretariat will begin the procedure for this year’s ENFIA.