Greek Tax Bureau Chief Details Efforts to Curb Evasion; Digitalize Administration

The head of Greece’s independent revenue authority (AADE), George Pitsilis, this week referred to his organization’s efforts to curb prolific and stubborn tax evasion and avoidance in the country and to fully digitalize services and monitoring, in his comments at an OECD summit.

For instance, Pitsilis said the myDATA online platform that debuted four years ago has recorded transactions worth 3.5 trillion euros conducted by all businesses registered in Greece.

The “digital transformation” has also been extended to bills of lading and transport invoices.

The AADE governor also said the vast majority of quarterly and annual VAT remittance statements – roughly 15 million – along with income tax forms, are automatically calculated over the course the year in real time.

“All this has helped us to drastically reduce the gap in (lost) VAT remittances from almost 30% in 2017 to 13.7% in 2022. Most importantly, however, is implementation of a ‘compliance by design’ strategy that provides us with tools for pro-active compliance, predictive analysis, and more targeted monitoring, yet always with the OECD spirit of Tax Administration 3.0 (the digital transformation of tax administration.”