Conduct of tax inspectors is questioned

Seven out of 10 taxpayers who resort to administrative courts win their cases. Finance Ministry data that Kathimerini has seen show that of 604 court verdicts, 440 were in the taxpayers’ favor, which raises significant questions as to the way inspections are conducted and the taxes and fines imposed.

According to law, taxpayers who dispute the conduct of the monitoring mechanisms are obliged to file complaints about the inspectors’ activity with the ministry’s arbitration directorate before resorting to the administrative courts. If after the decisions of the arbitration directorate the taxpayer believes they have been treated unfairly, they can then go to court.

Data reveal that 72.8 percent of administrative court decisions from August 2013 to September 2016 vindicated taxpayers.

A top official at the General Secretariat for Public Revenue told Kathimerini that the reason so many taxpayers have won their cases is due to the monitoring mechanisms’ miscalculations of taxes and fines. The same official said that the monitoring mechanisms imposed higher taxes than those due so that the heads of the monitoring centers could show that their agency had met its targets. This has also led to an increase in expired debts.