Tax audits expose unexplained remittances

Remittances abroad that are not justified by incomes declared in tax statements, problematic parental concessions or donations to children with sums of money directly “from the mattress,” and undeclared earnings were detected by the tax inspection centers in the audits they carried out in the first seven months of the year.

It is noted that parental concessions-donations are tax-free up to the amount of 800,000 euros from parents to children and vice versa, as well as from grandparents to their grandchildren.

The auditing authorities identified cases in January-July where the money or part of the donation did not come through a bank, as provided by law, while it was also established that these amounts were not declared in the tax return.

According to the data of the tax administration, a total of 4,748 major cases were audited between January and July, with the tax control mechanism imposing taxes and fines of €276 million. Of the above audits, 73.2% or 3,478 cases that were audited are fresh – i.e. from the last five or three years.

From the analysis of the data, it stems that fines and overdue debts can be collected for a maximum of five years. For those audits that were carried out and related to earlier cases, the state failed to collect the fines imposed or collected an exceptionally small percentage. For this reason, the orders of the director of the Independent Authority for Public Revenue (AADE), Giorgos Pitsilis, are that the targeting of the audits concerns the last five years.

A total of over 22,403 audits are under way by the newly established Audit Centers (ELKE), with high net worth taxpayers with undeclared income being the focus of inspections.

From the cases that have been fully processed, taxes and fines totaling €276.37 million were confirmed, of which €179.67 million concerns taxes that have been imposed following relevant audits, while €96.73 million comes from confirmed fines imposed on taxpayers, according to AADE figures.