He described the new application as another “weapon” in the hands of citizens, who, with its help, can even more actively help to effectively deal with cases of non-issuance of legal documents or incorrect transfer of information to the tax office. Authority for daily transactions. “Appodix” which was presented today and will be put into operation in the coming days, said the Minister of Finance Christos Staikouras.

At the same time, he noted that the new application is an innovative, easy-to-use and intelligent additional tool for its reduction. tax avoidancehowever, he noted that this development confirms in practice the strong commitment of the political leadership of the Ministry of Finance and AADE to sharply limit tax evasion through the optimal use of new technologies, as well as the digitization of tax procedures. in a citizen-friendly way.

The Secretary of the Treasury specifically stated that “the New Democracy government, from the very beginning of its term, has set as one of its strategic economic goals the establishment of a stable, cost-effective and socially fair tax system.” .

Four axles

The goal he spoke of is based on 4 main policy lines to encourage employment, attract investment and strengthen the culture of payments, given that taxation – in addition to its obvious function of generating income – is a useful lever to achieve development goals:

“Over the past three years, we have implemented dozens of permanent tax incentives (e.g. ENFIA reduction, personal import tax reduction, corporation tax reduction, withholding tax reduction on dividends, down payment reduction). tax, low tax coefficient for all agricultural schemes, elimination of the special solidarity levy on income from private sector employment – a measure that the Prime Minister announced becomes permanent from 2023 and applies to civil servants and pensioners, covering all taxpayers) “, – said Mr. Staikouras.

As the minister noted, “among other things, we have reduced the tax rate for start-ups for the first 3 years of their activity, set a discount on the costs associated with obtaining energy services, functional and aesthetic renovation of buildings, the suspension of VAT on new buildings and capital gains tax for 3 years , the formation of a special regime of alternative taxation of income arising abroad for investors, pensioners, Greeks who left during the crisis years, the establishment of tax incentives for business development, through partnerships and corporate transformations. In addition, in this context, we have provided incentives to improve electronic transactions. Incentives that have been particularly effective as they have helped e-transactions reach €53bn in 2021, an increase of €13bn over 2019 and are expected to exceed €60bn this year.”

Modernization of the Operational Coordination Center for Limiting the Smuggling of Excisable Goods, creation of electronic systems for controlling the supply chain of alcoholic products, creation of a new electronic inventory register for storage tanks and transshipment of fuels and lubricants, etc.

Projects such as simplifying the administrative procedures for VAT refunds for businesses, modernizing the use of AADE internal data, promoting the digital transformation of tax audits, introducing new tools aimed at improving government revenue collection, increasing the efficiency of tax control, and limiting smuggling.

Benefits for citizens

Mr. Staikouras also emphasized that “Creating incentives to increase the number of electronic transactions, promoting the digital transformation of tax audits and the digitization of the tax process through the use of electronic invoices and e-books constitute a dynamic tripartite intervention that contributes to a decisive expansion of the tax base, prevention and prevention tax evasion and tax evasion phenomena and, finally, the creation of fiscal space, with the aim of returning it to society. Precious space – especially in a volatile period of heightened support needs for households and businesses due to the successive, overlapping exogenous crises we are experiencing.”

And he concluded that “applications like myDATA, which introduced e-books into the daily life of businesses, combined with timologio, an application for digitally publishing business documents and transmitting them simultaneously to myDATA, are now the pillars of monitoring transactions from the Internal Revenue Service to real time. Pillars with significant societal response, as evidenced by AADE statistics, as more than 1.2 billion document translations have been carried out to date, totaling more than 718 billion euros. Monitoring that is further facilitated at the level of everyday transactions of citizens and businesses or professionals with the new Appodixi application introduced today.”

As noted by Mr. Staikouras, citizens can now check on their mobile phone with a few simple steps whether the receipt they received when purchasing a product or service is genuine and whether the details of the transaction have been submitted to AADE correctly. In the event that the application detects a problem, the tax authority is automatically notified so that they can take legal action to confirm the violation and charge a penalty.

“Indeed, the Ministry of Finance and AADE are exploring the possibility of providing an incentive for citizens to use the application, in the form of returning to the applicant a part of the fine that will be imposed on a business or professional for illegally obtaining they “scanned” through Appodixi. Thus, part of the additional tax revenues that will be received as a result of using the application will be returned directly to the citizen who contributed to the formation of these revenues,” said Mr. Staikouras.