Online accommodation booking data reveal extent of tax evasion

It seems that every stone the tax authorities turn over reveals major instances of tax evasion. By checking the declaration of revenues through online travel platform Booking.com, the Independent Authority for Public Revenue discovered that considerable revenues had been concealed by hotels and other forms of tourism accommodation.

The targeted inspection was based on the detailed information of bookings via the VAT Information Exchange System (VIES) for 2015 and 2016, listing the commissions that Booking.com charged Greek enterprises for the guests it had brought them. The charges were used to estimate the revenues of accommodation units that were in turn compared to the actual declarations in the same period.

This electronic cross-checking of over 17,000 enterprises across Greece showed that more than 1,000 of them presented discrepancies between estimated and...