Sifting through taxpayer data
The tax administration is asking commercial lenders to supply it with additional data on bank accounts, taxpayers’ loans, interest paid and dividends distributed by the end of February. The credit institutions will have to submit information about the deposits and payments of individuals with a total annual value of inflow or outflow in excess of 100,000 euros.
The data that the Independent Authority for Public Revenue (IAPR) will collect will not only be used for filling the tax declarations of taxpayers, but also for cross-checking the declarations individuals and corporations submit. Accounts will be monitored against money laundering too.
Tax officers note that cross-checking will increase considerably this year through the new and evolved online systems. The objective is to identify tax evasion pockets and income hidden by taxpayers. Besides the banks, the tax authorities will also receive data from private schools, cellphone networks, private hospitals and even water companies such as EYDAP.
The decision signed by IAPR Director Giorgos Pitsilis provides for credit institutions, financing foundations, card payment processing companies, payment institutions, Hellenic Post, and investment service suppliers to send data to IAPR concerning the interest on deposits, repos, treasury bills and state bonds, corporate bonds of listed companies and securities from other countries.
IAPR checks will focus on a number of information categories in order to reveal any hidden taxable material. Besides the data on interest paid to taxpayers and corporations, tax officers will sift through bank accounts that exceeded transactions of €100,000, payments from financial leasing companies for the repayment of mortgages, consumer or other loans, dividends based on data supplied by Hellenic Exchanges SA etc.
Cross-checking will also involve information stemming from insurance policies, such as those for life, personal injury and health. IAPR will further incorporate in its monitoring process the cost of healthcare at private clinics, tuition fees at private schools, the cost of telephony services (landline and cellular), the amount paid to electricity companies, and annual water bills of more than €1,000.
