More than 25,000 complaints, most anonymous, about businesses evading taxes have been filed with the Independent Authority for Public Revenue (AADE) from the beginning of the year up to August 26, authority officials said, acknowledging consumers’ important role in ferreting out tax evasion.
Of these complaints, 7,455 involved scanning receipts in the public portal apodixi.gr to determine whether they are legitimate. One such scan of a receipt’s QR code determined, for example, that the receipt was not submitted to AADE, as all receipts must be. The business that issued the receipt, a well-known sushi bar in central Athens, was heavily fined and shut down for 48 hours.
Not all complaints lead to such outcomes; authorities estimated that between 7,000 and 10,000 will be investigated throughout the year. AADE estimates that a crackdown on tax evasion will boost revenue by more than €2.5 billion this year.
Residents and visitors can also report instances of alleged corruption by public servants; over 2,000 such complaints have been filed.
