No fine for missing online payments target

The Finance Ministry has decided it is only fair to cancel the fines for taxpayers who have failed to spend 30% of the income they made last year via online transactions.

The suspension of the fine will only apply for 2020, while for 2021 the government re-examining tax incentives for online payments, and is considering incentives for those who have started spending their savings, which rose 16.5 billion euros last year.

“We cannot continue today to apply a measure that was [drawn up during times of] normal consumption. No one should worry, no one should be treated unfairly. We will see who has a problem and why, and then we shall make our decisions. There is no chance of it applying as it was planned,” Alternate Finance Minister Thodoris Skylakakis stated during the weekend.

That means that those who did not spend three-tenths of their income in 2020 using debit or credit cards or internet transactions will not pay the fine equal to 22% of the amount they failed to cover with their online transactions.

The government also intends to further bolster electronic payments by revisiting its plans regarding taxpayer incentives. They had been put on ice as a result of the health crisis, but Kathimerini understands they will now be returning to the table. Sources say that the Finance Ministry is mulling amending its tax lottery, with winnings set to exceed the amount of €100,000 for the top winners.

Another change under consideration is to only include taxpayers’ transactions with sectors that tend to have high levels of tax evasion in the lottery. They include hairdressers, car repair shops, gyms, doctors and lawyers. Consequently, in order to win the top prizes from the monthly sum of €1 million, taxpayers will have to collect receipts from those professions.

The ministry is also considering offering more than cash to taxpayers through the lotteries, namely property assets that have been confiscated from debtors. Other ideas include the exemption from the annual taxable income of payments made online to some of the above professional categories with a track record of high tax evasion, or certain receipts from those categories counting as double. More details will be made known soon.