New “weapon” against tax evasion with artificial intelligence and scanning digital intersections

A new “weapon” against tax evasion is set to be activated soon by the independent General Revenue Authority, which will conduct comprehensive checks on tax information and data to identify undeclared income. It is about to New digital delivery unit Which, using artificial intelligence, will benefit from all tax data reservoirs, including digital tax systems, social media and the Internet.

The aim of AADE is for the new module to work together with all the “tools” of tax administration, such as e-books (myDATA), the appodixi application, the interconnection of points of sale with cash registers as well as citizen platforms. complaints in order to enhance the possibilities of collecting income that has not been declared to the tax office or taxes that have not been paid.

Within the framework of the new unit, a series of intersection categories will be included, which will begin during the coming period, namely:

– Monitoring the data declared by property owners active in short-term rental contracts. It will be investigated, among other things, whether owners of Airbnb and other categories of short-term rentals have a property registration number in the transactions they carry out, if they declare a business activity.

– Detecting suspicious transactions by developing statistical methodology.

– Disclosure of unannounced real estate sales and purchases through available data.

– Benefit from data generated from electronic books (myDATA) and declarations related to zero VAT

– Verify the total declared revenue of hotels with data obtained from the booking platform.

– Search for details of taxpayer transactions from foreign payment services.

The AADE arsenal will be strengthened by other moves expected to be operational by the end of the year. These include the new information system for controlling property increases, the system for using input and output data, and the new property ownership and management register. At the same time, the design also includes the operation of the Tax and Customs Control and Investigation Centre. The aim is to act as a coordination centre for all specialised tax and customs control units.

AADE’s priorities also include monitoring and collecting overdue public debts. The goal of Two new collection centers Which was activated in Athens and Thessaloniki It is the search for undeclared assets of debtors or undeclared bank accounts. Their responsibilities include, among other things:

– Activating compulsory collection procedures for debtors who do not settle their obligations to the tax office

– Classification of debtors based on the size of their debts

– Automatic monitoring of the progress of overdue debts for each debtor

– Identify, using digital tools, debtors who frequently change their home or workplace address in order to lose track of them.