The “explosion” of electronic payments is registered in tax declarations, with data from their processing revealing transactions for consumer needs worth 55 billion euros for the year 2022, a value corresponding to 60% of declared income (around of 92 billion euros). ).
An impressive proportion
The ratio is impressive in itself, as code 049 essentially only includes household consumption expenditure. There are no loan payments, rent payments, etc. If we also add these, the values based on what is written in the tax declarations (around 5.7 billion euros are loan payments, while another 3.13 billion euros are given for rent) we will hopefully arrive at 63, 67 billion euros. If we add the approximately 8 to 9 billion euros in income tax, the ratio approaches 80%.
With these data, it can be concluded that all cash expenses incurred in Greece, as well as those not recorded in the tax declaration, do not exceed 20 billion euros.
Obviously this is not the case – otherwise we would be a country where almost all payments would be made electronically, so the declarations give yet another indication of massive income hiding.
In addition to the number of electronic payments reflected in tax declaration codes 049 and 050, the year-on-year growth rate is also impressive.
From 37 billion euros in 2021 (referring to transactions from the difficult 2020 due to the pandemic, which was also the reason for getting used to electronic payments) we reached 45.5 billion euros in 2022 and 55 billion euros in 2023.
The Ministry of Finance “bets” on a very large increase that will be reflected both in this year’s tax returns and – mainly – in the following year.
This year it is expected to surpass the barrier of 60 billion euros, while next year the benefit of the expansion of POS should be registered in almost all economic activities. Based on conservative forecasts, at the end of this year electronic payments – that is, transactions using cards or through transfers from bank account to bank account – will even exceed 70 billion euros.
At the moment, tax returns record the following performances:
1 In 2020 (2021 declarations) the average expenditure per taxpayer was around 5,500 euros. Code 049 had transactions worth 28.01 billion euros and code 050 (wife) 8.9 billion euros: a total of 37 billion euros.
two In 2021 (2022 declarations) there was a further increase in average expenditure to 6,500 euros per taxpayer, bringing the total to 45.5 billion euros, an increase of 8.5 billion euros in one year.
3 In 2022 (2023 returns) we reached a historic maximum of 54.8 billion euros (42.2 billion euros for the debtor and 12.6 billion euros for the spouse), which means that the average rose to 8,000 euros for the debtor and 7,268 euros for the wife.
Obviously, the growth rate is much higher than the income growth rate.
This is due to taxpayers’ “familiarity” with electronic payments, but also to the fact that incomes are increasing, as well as the fact that measures to combat tax evasion are bearing fruit. The big “bet” is, of course, the electronic transactions of 2024. On the one hand, because the new measures are being activated (extension of POS even on trams and taxis) and on the other hand, because it is already known that taxpayers who Unusually high electronic payments in proportion to income can… get in the way of tax audits.
What does this detailed family record help?
The larger the “raw material”, the greater leeway tax authorities have in identifying taxpayers with unusually high transactions for their income data. The first AADE cross-checks were carried out weeks ago to identify those who, despite declaring income of up to 10 thousand euros, have multiple incomes.
Electronic payments do not constitute “presumption”. But it raises reasonable suspicions when a taxpayer with an income of 10,000 euros is burdened with expenses of 150,000 euros.
1,500 cases of this type have already been identified and the results of the checks launched by AADE will be published in the next period.
In fact, these checks will be repeated at regular intervals in order to put “pressure” on those selected for several years.
Registration also helps increase VAT revenue. After all, it is a fundamental objective of economic policy to reduce the VAT “gap” to a single-digit rate for the first time.