New online register to include all properties, shares, money abroad

Taxpayers will have to declare income from abroad, holdings in foreign companies and property assets and capital in other countries in the online asset register (“Periousiologio”) that the General Secretariat for Public Revenue will introduce in 2017, which will also include all taxpayer data stored by the tax authorities.

According to a top Finance Ministry official, by the end of the year a regulation will be submitted to Parliament that will force all Greek taxpayers to declare the assets and income listed above in the asset register. Even if taxpayers do not do so voluntarily, Automatic Exchange of Information agreements with 84 countries mean that the tax authorities can quickly get the required data themselves.

All that data will be added to the online profile of each taxpayer and if there are any errors or discrepancies they will be invited to make corrections and continue to update their personal data on an annual basis.

As the same ministry official explains, there will be a special form on the secretariat’s Taxisnet website onto which the data the tax authorities already have will be automatically transferred. This will include data on real estate, boats, cars, corporate holdings and bank accounts etc, which taxpayers will have to confirm and, if necessary, add whatever has not been included.

Besides the information already on Taxisnet, banks will contribute detailed information on their clients, including the number of accounts of each taxpayer and their balances at end-2016.

The ministry official adds, however, that the idea of also including assets such as jewelry, mattressed cash and works of art has been abandoned. The value of precious items cannot be established objectively, so they will be left out of the online asset register.

All data collected will be uploaded on a special form on Taxisnet.

According to the plan, the online application will be activated just before the period for the submission of income tax declarations next year (for the 2016 incomes) for taxpayers to check and update the data uploaded on their profile. An email sent to all taxpayers will ask them to confirm the data or make any necessary modifications before a certain deadline.

Ministry officials stress that it is in the taxpayers’ interests to declare assets the tax authorities are not aware of, as any changes in taxpayers’ bank accounts which cannot be explained will incur a fine.