The conflict between accountants and the Ministry of Economy and Finance is intensifying, with the former attributing a lot of errors in the statements, while asking for an extension, while the other financial staff is adamant refusing to extend the deadlines. In fact, accountants have reported to the Ombudsman, citing errors and omissions in the system and the inability to carry out their professional obligations.

The Finance Ministry said that the process is continuing at a high pace, noting that the process can be completed by the July 26 deadline. It is noteworthy that the governor of ADE, George Pitsilis, categorically ruled out the possibility of an extension, saying “let everyone forget about it”.

The real picture is that the extension of the declarations is now a one-way street. According to the AADE’s figures, in the 10 days before the deadline for filing tax returns, 4,854,138 E1s have been cleared, which means that about 1.8 million returns remain. With this data, to complete the process on schedule, an average of 165,000 returns should be submitted on a daily basis when last weekend they “dropped” below 50,000.

In their appeal to the Ombudsman, accountants and tax advisors point out that due to problems in the operation of the system of the AADE the branch of accountants daily face great difficulties and can not work seamlessly to process them resulting in a prohibitive increase in their working hours within the already tight timeframes set by the tax administration. They also note that it creates mental and physical health issues and causes financial damage to accountants as they are unable to process the obligations of their clients.

The report lists bottlenecks in the submission of tax returns for the tax year such as:

Technical problems and delays in data enrichment in the system have forced the effective possibility of submitting some declarations from 15/05/2024 onwards.

The system is constantly being enriched with data, which creates the need to submit amending declarations.

E-mails are sent to taxpayers at frequent intervals, which on the one hand confirms the incomplete enrichment of the system, and on the other hand creates confusion for taxpayers and accounting offices.

The system very often stops working.

A self-employed person with a disabled child was not granted the deduction on imputed income.

In the automatically submitted pre-completed Tax Returns, problems were mostly observed, such as for example overtaxation, non-inclusion of disability, elderly people.

There are also cases of purchase and sale of real estate, cars, incorrect registration of interest, etc., which requires submission of amended returns by 26/07.

It is noted that the Minister of National Economy and Finance K. Hadjidakis in mid-May replied to the accountants who had recorded a number of problems as follows: “I am surprised, because last year there were no such announcements or the year before or the year before last and there are especially this year. Is this related to the fact that taxpayers’ signatures are no longer required and the return is considered to be valid hence an additional reason for taxpayers not to resort to accountants? Could it be? It is a question that anyone can ponder.”