AADE: Santorini cruise ship inspectors report – turnover hidden by thousands of euros

With the organization a jobheld simultaneously Three ports of Santoriniits reviewers Independent Public Revenue Authority Immediately identified and verified Tax evasion through boats that make hundreds of daily cruises every daybringing thousands of tourists to the caldera.

Use of information

The auditors used information and evidence that indicated that some cruise ships:

• Hiding income in various ways, such as issuing inaccurate tax information, circumventing the full charter, and thus not paying a large amount of VAT to the Greek state
• When they are informed in any way of a tax audit being conducted at the port of Vlechada, they avoid docking and disembarking passengers at that port, changing the course of their ships and taking refuge in nearby, more hidden and less known docks, in order to avoid the surveillance of the tax audit.

the job

On Thursday, August 22, 2024, after sunset, the inspectors swooped in, stationed themselves on every dock in the port, and surprised the first arriving tourist boats, which were then returning full of tourists from day trips.

Multiple tax audits were conducted on site and violations were found, resulting in VAT fines and special financial penalties.

The following afternoon, 23 August 2024, half of the monitors returned to Flehada to continue the inspection. Some boats, when entering to disembark passengers, were informed that AADE units were conducting inspections again in the same port, and changed their course, approaching nearby ports and docks to avoid tax control.

But the remaining half of the auditors were waiting for them, surprising them, examining them, discovering tax violations there too, and proceeding to impose VAT fines and special financial penalties.

Results

total, 14 ships were inspected and violations were detected in 8 of them.

In just two days, it turned out that they had hidden sales worth €10,100, plus VAT of €2,420.

In addition to fines of up to 20,000 euros for these two days only, the companies identified are being examined in order to determine the total amount of tax evasion.

Source: RES-MPE