ATHENS – A long-delayed Greek lottery that will give 1000 winners prizes of 1000 euros ($1193), aimed at cutting down tax evasion, has spurred soaring use of credit and debit cards in the country.
The draw was made on Nov. 30 but involved the use of cards only for October instead of the first 10 months of the year as originally intended and was done to encourage greater use of cards instead of cash, which has led to massive tax cheating for generations, particularly among the rich, many of whom hide their money in secret foreign bank accounts.
According to data from the Independent Authority for Public Revenue, the 8 million transactions that entered the draw exceeded 2.1 billion euros ($2.5 billion,), concerning some 4.5 million taxpayers.
IAPR head Giorgos Pitsilis cash cash prizes will be credited to the winners’ bank accounts after they have informed the authority of their IBAN numbers via its website (www.aade.gr).
Another set of 1,000 tax registration numbers (AFMs) were also drawn as backup in case any of the first 1,000 winners fail to claim their prizes. The taxpayers whose AFMs were drawn will need to register their IBAN number within three months of the draw or lose their winnings.
The tax authority is also planning a big end-of-year draw based on receipts from transactions in the first nine months of the year and in November. Some 10,000 winners will be drawn for 1000 euros each winnings, which are tax-free.
The list of winners is on the Public Draws page on the IAPR website and requires using taxpayers’ Taxisnet access username and password. Winners will also be informed via personal messages to their Taxisnet profile. No paper receipt is required for the collection of prizes.
There was so much interest that the website was temporarily brought down by over-usage with people eager to see if they had gotten a nice Christmas bonus unexpectedly.
The limit is one prize per taxpayer so that if someone’s cards are drawn more than once the additional prizes will go to backups who are chosen.
Read more here.
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Photo Source: Wikimedia Commons Copyright: Maxpayne473 License: CC-BY-SA
Source: thenationalherald.com
