A new "weapon" against tax evasion will be activated in the coming period by the Independent Authority for Public Revenue (AADE), which will carry out sweeping cross-checks of tax data and data to identify undeclared income.

The reason for the new digital cross-checks unit is that it will use artificial intelligence to tap into all tax data pools, including digital tax systems, social media, and the internet.

According to Athens News Agency, AADE's goal is for the new unit to operate in combination with all the "tools" of the tax administration, such as electronic books (myDATA), the Appodixi application, the interface of POS with cash registers, and the citizen complaint platforms, in order to enhance the possibilities of catching income not declared to the tax office or taxes not paid.

CROSS CHECKS

The new unit includes a number of categories of cross-checks that will be launched in the coming period, which are:

• Checking the data declared by property owners engaged in short-term rentals. Among other things, it will be investigated whether Airbnb and other categories of short-term rentals owners have a Property Registration Number on the transactions they carry out and whether they have declared a business activity.
• The identification of suspicious transactions is achieved through the development of statistical methodology.
• The disclosure of undeclared property transactions through available data.
• The use of the data obtained from the electronic registers (myDATA) concerning zero VAT returns
  The cross-checking of the declared gross revenues of hotels with the data obtained from the Booking platform
• The search for taxpayers' transaction data from foreign payment services.

The AADE's arsenal is to be strengthened, with other moves expected to be activated by the end of the year. Among these are the new information system for the control of property increment, the system for the utilisation of input-output data, and the new Property and Real Estate Management Register.

At the same time, the operation of the special forces centre for tax and customs inspections and investigations is also included in the plan. The aim is to function as a coordination centre for all specialised units of tax and customs controls.

DEBTS

The monitoring and collection of overdue debts to the State is also one of the priorities of the ADSE. The aim of the two new collection centres that have been activated in Athens and Thessaloniki is to search for undeclared assets of debtors or undeclared bank accounts. Their responsibilities include, among others, the following:

• The activation of coercive collection measures on debtors who do not settle their obligations with the tax authorities
• Categorising debtors according to the amount of their debt
• The automatic monitoring of the evolution of each debtor's overdue debts
• The identification, using digital tools, of debtors who frequently change their address or place of business in order to lose track of them.