A new dimension is given to tax controls based on the provisions of the new Tax Code that the Ministry of Finance ( ) brings to consultation, probably within the day, as Minister Kostis Hatzidakis announced at his presentation yesterday, Thursday (21.32024). The political leadership of the Ministry of Finance explained the changes made to tax controls, among the other provisions of the bill, and specifically in relation to the institutionalisation of certain time limits, the conditions for their extension, and how to deal with tax avoidance from seasonal enterprises by determining the intermediate tax. Time limits and categories of checks The bill for the first time lays down specific time limits for the completion of tax controls. Until now, a tax audit could continue indefinitely until there is a limitation of the case. The financial staff with the new law stipulates that the ceiling allowed to complete the audit will be one year. Under conditions, there will be a partial extension of the limit by another year. Initially for 6 months, and only for very special cases for others 6. As Kostis Hatzidakis explained, one of the objectives of the bill is to engage in trust between taxpayers and tax administration. Therefore, it is necessary with the bill to clarify more fully the pre-existing categories of tax controls, i.e. what is “complete” and what is “partial”, what is “local” and what is “remote”, while there will be an explicit provision that both partial and complete will be definitive controls. As the administrator of AADE, George Pitsilis, added, there will be a manual of the service for officials carrying out the checks, with a view to normalising tax controls, while it did not rule out in the future a form of formalisation, ISO. With the new bill they are targeted by the Ministry of Finance and the ADE and those businesses, basically seasonal, who used to pay part of their tax obligations and then disappear. In particular, the financial staff shall replace the preventive determination of tax by the interim determination of tax. Preventive tax determination meant that the tax administration could issue an act of preventive tax determination after the beginning of the tax period, but before the date of submission of the corresponding tax declaration, in order to ensure that the tax was collected immediately. However, this was only foreseen in ‘extreme’ cases since there were specific indications that the taxpayer intended to leave the country , jeopardising the collection of the tax, in particular through the transfer of assets to another person. The legislative change “puts into the frame” and seasonal businesses, where the problem of paying their tax obligations in the first place was observed more often, but in subsequent instalments they closed the business and defaulted payments. For example, if a beach bar pays VAT by June, and plans at the end of August to “disappear” without paying, a check on 20 August will not take into account the company’s obligations until the end of the previous quarter (June) but until the day of the check, depending on the tax even between the two tax periods. In fact, the tax will be immediately required, thus ensuring that the entrepreneur does not… “do it”.
All changes in tax controls – In the microscope tax avoidance seasonal operations
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