Tills’ online link with tax authorities starts in June

The Finance Ministry’s Taxis system will be updated with receipt data from businesses’ cash tills every minute as of this coming summer, according to a decision by the Independent Authority for Public Revenue regarding the online connection of tills with Taxisnet.

The decision by Giorgos Pitsilis, director of the Independent Authority for Public Revenue, rules that all tills and tax mechanisms will have to be upgraded so that they can be connected with Taxis by June 6. The decision also determines the standards required for each receipt issued to carry a unique QR code that will safeguard their validity, uniqueness and origin.

In addition, IAPR head Pitsilis’ decision specifies the periods when the automatic interconnection of tills with Taxis will be activated for the submission of receipt data. It will be possible to centrally change the frequency at which data are sent so that it may differ from till to till and range from once a minute to every 24 hours. Any professionals who fail to change their tills will be expected to pay a fine of 500 euros per tax inspection.

With the interconnection of tills with the online tax service, the monitoring mechanism will be able to identify behaviors that constitute indications of tax evasion. For example, if the till of a taverna shows very slow activity on a Saturday evening, it will be brought to the attention of inspectors. Furthermore, the monitoring officials will be able to deduce sector statistics more easily and locate those who have unjustifiably low transaction levels. Such businesses will as a result be examined for possible tax evasion.

Combined with the online bookkeeping, the Finance Ministry will also be able to know the value-added tax it will collect every month or every quarter at any given moment, as well as calculate income tax with greater accuracy.

The measure of the online interconnection of tills and the other electronic tax mechanisms with IAPR information technology infrastructure may have been provided for by a law dating since 2016, but it has taken almost four years for the ministerial decisions to be issued and the technical standards to be set for the implementation of the measure.