Tax declaration deadline to be put back

The deadline for the submission of income tax declarations will be extended to July 20, Kathimerini understands.

Sources say that Alternate Finance Minister Nadia Valavani will announce the extension in the next few days, but even that date may prove too soon for the completion of the delayed procedure.

Concerns are focused on the very low number of statements submitted to date, totaling 1.77 million, meaning that some 4.3 million still need to be processed. Had the government decided to stick to the June 30 deadline it would have to receive 605,000 statements per day, which is impossible as the ministry?s online system cannot handle anymore than 150,000 declarations in any one day.

If an extension to July 20 is granted, the system will be pushed to its limit as it would have to handle an average of 155,000 statements per day. Experience from previous years has shown that the platform of the General Secretariat for Information Systems crashes when it is overloaded. Last year the GSIS had asked taxpayers to try to submit their statements at night.