The Greek tax service does not have the right to take into account transactions and deposits of bank accounts in Greece that are older than five years from the time of its audit, according to the Council of State, which made references to running a country by the rule of law.
The country’s highest administrative court was asked to rule on the audit of a deceased businessman’s assets for the time period of 2001-2008. His daughter, who stood to inherit, contested the decision of the Tax Service to use bank account transactions as supplementary evidence for outstanding tax, past the five-year limitation.
In its ruling, the Council of State noted that the tax authorities were responsible for knowing and using the information within five years, and could therefore not use as supplementary evidence information that “was ignored or not taken properly into consideration”, as set out by the law, past that statute of limitations.
In its ruling, the judges criticised the tax services directly, by stating that “among the basic and regular means of checking the accuracy of tax returns during an audit, which should be conducted within the five-year period of time (…), is the review of the balance and transactions of bank accounts of the taxpayer in this country,” and these balances in no way could serve as supplementary evidence to extend the five-year statute of limitations.
If that were the case, the court argued, the rule of limitation would have no application in essence.
The five-year limitation must also be set ahead of time, and its extension is only possible under specific circumstances, according to the Greek constitution – in other words, a regulation to extend the statute of limitations must be set at most one year after the year in which the tax obligation is outstanding. To introduce a law, therefore, “about extending the time of write-off of tax debts which were due on a calendar year preceding the year before the publication of such a law, is indefensible, as contrary to the principle of rule of law,” it stressed, as it would retroactively change the legal status of the outstanding debt, to the detriment of taxpayers.
Read more here.
RELATED TOPICS: Greece, Greek tourism news, Tourism in Greece, Greek islands, Hotels in Greece, Travel to Greece, Greek destinations , Greek travel market, Greek tourism statistics, Greek tourism report
Photo Source: Wikimedia Commons Copyright: Yannismarou License: CC-BY-SA
Source: ANA-MPA
