Account data at inspectors’ full disposal
Tax inspectors will soon have full online access to all bank account transactions going back 10 years, as a Finance Ministry decision set to be issued in the coming days will effectively abolish any sense of bank privacy when it comes to the tax authorities.
The enhanced “System of Bank Account and Payments Account Registers” will be available to all the country’s major monitoring authorities, such as the Financial Crimes Squad (SDOE), the Center for Taxpayers of Major Wealth, which looks into large sums forwarded to other countries, and the Major Enterprises Monitoring Center, among others.
According to the plans, the system will be further augmented by the end of 2015 with the addition of data concerning loan transactions and stock products, the General Secretariat for Public Revenues has announced.
The system started operating in early 2014, but until now inspectors only had access to specific information, such as account balances, opening and closure dates etc. When an inspector wanted to monitor an account, he first had to submit an application to the bank, which then forwarded the response in online or even printed form in a process which in many cases took several months. Now this process is to be accelerated considerably, although certain rules will still protect sensitive personal data.
