Greek tax authorities and the finance ministry are not ready yet to implement the program that would register consumer payments with debit and credit cards.
According to the finance ministry, as of January 1, 2017 goods and services purchased with the use of debit or credit cards up to certain amounts per tax scale, will have to be submitted with the income tax form to justify the income.
The measure is established in order to curb tax evasion. It calls for banks to be connected to a finance ministry mainframe that would monitor taxpayers’ purchases with debit or credit cards.
However, even though the measure has been officially announced and taxpayers have been advised to collect receipts of electronic transactions, the system that would record electronic transactions is not in place yet. Finance ministry officials have not met with pertinent bank officials yet to formulate the program.
It is likely that the system will be operational in February. However, salaried employees, pensioners, farmers and other groups of taxpayers will lose at least one month of collecting receipts of electronic payments.
Taxpayers who will not be able to collect the correct amount of receipts will face a penalty of an additional 22% of taxes due. The finance ministry is considering to accept any kind of receipts for the time period the electronic payment monitoring system is not operating.
At the same time, the finance ministry has not decided yet on the full list of services where electronic payments will qualify for the program. For instance, it has not been decided yet if receipts from medical expenses or telephone services could be used in the program.
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