Greece To Keep Track Of Taxpayers’ Assets
Greece’s Deputy Finance Minister, Trifon Alexiadis, has fired Greece’s first salvo in the fight to overcome the country’s non-compliance problems, announcing the introduction of a comprehensive scheme of asset registration for all taxpayers.
The new “Asset Declaration” measure will apply from the beginning of 2016. In preparation, the tax authorities are already compiling a database of known assets for every taxpayer. It is hoped this will be complete by November 2015.
Taxpayers will then be asked to verify the information held by the authorities and declare any missing assets, including real estate, cars, stocks and shares, foreign bank accounts and cash. Any previously “hidden” assets declared at this point will be subject to tax at the normal rates applicable to the period when the income was generated.
Having regularized the situation in this way, the new system of asset registration will apply from the beginning of 2016. Taxpayers will be obliged to submit to the tax authorities a detailed list of all assets of any sort. The authorities will then be able to compare earnings with asset accumulation and thereby better detect any undeclared earnings.
