Anyone who receives a receipt in Greece can now use an app to check whether it is genuine.
(Photo: AP)
Athens The Athens Finance Minister is stepping up the fight against tax fraud. Rampant tax evasion was one of the causes of the Greek financial crisis over the past decade. With a tap of their smartphone, consumers in Greece can now check whether the receipts they receive when shopping are real.
Anyone who reports a forged receipt to the tax authorities will receive a reward of up to 2,000 euros. The response is huge: consumers report an average of 1,600 cases of tax fraud every day.
Just like the car driver Vasilis. For 63 euros he had drawn fuel at a gas station in the Athens suburb of Agia Paraskevi. That’s what it said on the receipt that the gas station attendant gave him. But when he scanned the receipt with his smartphone a little later, it turned out that the receipt was forged. With a tap of his finger, he forwarded the findings to the Treasury.
Inspectors from the tax office determined: In fact, the gas station operator had only reported a fuel tax of 20 euros to the tax authorities.
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“Appodixi” is the name of the mobile phone application that convicted the gas station leaseholder. The word is a combination of app and “apodixi”, the Greek word for receipt. In Greece, you can download it to your smartphone for free from the App Store or Google Play. More than 100,000 consumers have already done so since the application went live on September 21st.
Greeks report thousands of violations every day
Already on the first day, the tax authorities received around 700 reports of forged receipts. In the first two weeks it was almost 25,000. The success exceeded all expectations, according to circles in the Greek Ministry of Finance. So far, the Greek tax authorities have employed around 5,000 tax investigators. Now it’s almost over 100,000.
The number of around 1,600 violations reported every day shows that tax evasion is a chronic problem in Greece. A 2020 study by Professor Athanasios Anastasiou from the University of the Peloponnese concludes that tax evasion has steadily increased over the past 40 years.
In 1980 it still made up 3.74 percent of gross domestic product, in 2018 it was already 10.3 percent. That would correspond to an amount of 18.5 billion euros that escapes the tax authorities.
According to calculations by the EU Commission, value added tax (VAT) evaded in Greece alone amounted to 5.35 billion euros in 2021. Almost 26 percent of the VAT due slips through the fingers of the tax authorities. This is the second highest rate in the EU after Romania. Greece is followed by Malta and Italy.
The new app is very easy to use. In Greece, all cash registers and card terminals must be connected to the central tax authority’s TAXISnet data system via internet or cellular. Once a day, at the end of the day, all transactions made are transmitted to the authorities. Each receipt has a QR code. It is automatically generated by the cash register and contains all the details of the transaction such as date, time, amount and company tax number.
In the first two weeks, the Greek authorities have already received more than 25,000 reports.
(Photo: Appodixi)
The app enables the consumer to read the code with his mobile phone camera. He then receives immediate feedback as to whether this transaction has been reported to the tax authorities.
Merchants cheat with a second checkout
Quite a few traders try to trick the tax authorities. They have two cash registers: one that issues receipts for customers but is not connected to TAXISnet, and a second that they use to report lower sales to the authorities. This is what the gas station leaseholder in Agia Paraskevi did. Apparently, this is a widespread practice, as the around 1,600 violations reported every day show.
The tax fraudsters face draconian penalties: the Treasury can close the affected businesses for two to twelve months and impose penalties of 15 percent of the annual turnover. In the case of the gas station, the fine will amount to around 350,000 euros.
The Treasury wants to return part of the tax penalties to the successful amateur tax investigators: you can expect rewards of up to 2000 euros for reported violations. A corresponding law is to be passed shortly.
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