TAXATION

Taxman knows your earnings

Administration to ask taxpayers with salaries and pensions abroad to declare them

Taxman knows your earnings

The tax administration has identified thousands of Greek taxpayers with incomes from salaries and pensions abroad, through the data it receives annually in the context of an automatic exchange of information with other countries.

Those taxpayers will be notified in the coming days in order to submit a supplementary income tax declaration with their incomes in other countries. The tax administration will immediately issue new tax clearance slips, also imposing the fines on those who forgot to declare their full incomes.

The head of the Independent Authority for Public Revenue, Giorgos Pitsilis, told the 6th Thessaloniki Summit this week that the monitoring mechanism utilizes the data from the automatic exchange of information. He added that “in 2020 and 2021 we have identified taxpayers who had incomes from salaries, pensions etc. abroad and have not declared them. This data comes from the information exchange, so we will notify these people to make declarations, also declaring any other information that may reduce their tax obligations.”

Because of the pandemic, taxpayers will not have to go to the tax offices; they can send all the necessary documents through email, such as the details of their bank transactions that would document the depositing of salaries or pensions by enterprises and social security organizations abroad.

According to an IAPR circular, the tax offices will accept “any document determining the final taxable amount of pensions abroad, such as a copy of a bank statement where a pension from a foreign social security fund is deposited.”

In case a taxpayer submits a declaration where the amounts declared match the amounts mentioned in the email received from the tax administration, then there is no need for the submission of any documents.

The IAPR is preparing a handsome tax bill for those taxpayers who have failed to state their true income, using the data it has. This means the taxman will calculate the tax using estimates, and send the pay notices by year-end.

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