Recent tax cases bring money to state coffers

Monitoring tax violation cases from the last five years brings greater gains to state coffers, the director of the Independent Authority for Public Revenue, Giorgos Pitsilis, says in an interview with Kathimerini.

The collection rate for cases up to five years old comes to 47 percent, Pitsilis says, while older cases have a rate of just 9 percent, so the more recent the cases probed, the bigger the chances to collect taxes and fines. What the official is saying, in effect, is that the various lists of suspicious deposits abroad are of limited interest, as confirmed by the collection data.

Referring to the financial years covered by the statute of limitations, Pitsilis says that the tax administration must respect Constitution and abide by the ruling of the Council of State, which said that the common practice of the Finance Ministry to extend inspection periods into the...