Deadline is extended for the first batch of tax declarations
The Finance Ministry has issued a four-day extension for taxpayers who were supposed to submit their electronic income tax declarations by Monday, just a few hours before the expiry of the deadline, while the General Secretariat for Information Systems’ Taxisnet system was reported to have crashed.
The ministry announced that the deadline for taxpayers whose tax code ends in the numbers 1 or 2 can now submit their declaration by this Friday, July 26. There were also additional problems reported yesterday as far as banks’ declarations of taxpayers’ interest revenues are concerned.
Accountants, tax experts and taxpayers across the country are demanding an extension of the deadline for all taxpayers to the end of August, if not later.
The ministry’s intention is also to have all taxpayers submit their declarations by August 30, but no such announcement has been made as yet in this direction. Sources say that the Taxisnet system will be up and running after August 10 or 15, which means that declarations will until then be submitted depending on the last digit of each tax code.
The main reason why the ministry will not open its electronic portal for everyone at the same time is simply collection-oriented as it attempts to cash in as many revenues as possible from taxpayers’ income tax to cover the revenues shortfall that in the first half of the year amounted to 1.6 billion euros. Notably, married couples can use the most favorable of their two tax codes and submit their declaration according to the deadline of the highest last digit they have.
This year the submission of tax declarations has tested the patience of taxpayers. In what is the first year when all taxpayers are supposed to submit their declarations electronically, the ministry’s electronic portal opened at least three months late, on May 24, while the boxes on the interest revenues of taxpayers were only filled by banks last Wednesday, which was five days before the first deadline, for tax codes ending in 1 and 2. There have also been problems and delays in the submission of revenue documents to pensioners.
