By Chrysostomos Tsoufis

The “clean accounts” business with freelancers is being put forward by the financial staff today as the Minister of Finance will present to the cabinet, the bill to limit tax evasion which, among other things, provides for a drastic change of scenery in the taxation of this “misunderstood” professional group .

The statement of Kostis Hatzidakis that “the self-employed employer cannot pay less tax than his employee, let alone when the employee is paid the minimum wage” sets the framework in which the finance ministry will move.

The central idea of ​​the new tax landscape for freelancers is that a minimum acceptable taxable income is expected to be set, which cannot be less than €10,920 gross, i.e. €780 which is the minimum wage over 14 months.

Given that the import tax rate is 9%, the resulting tax cannot be less than €983.

According to the information of skai.gr, this limit will be defeasible. In other words, the self-employed taxpayer, by providing specific data, will be able to prove that his annual income is indeed lower than the limit that has been set and therefore pay less tax.

According to the data of AADE, which Kostis Hatzidakis also presented to the Parliament, out of the total of 676,500 free professional and self-employed:

  • 265,977 ie about 40% declare zero annual income or even losses.
  • 170,244, approximately 1/4, declare an annual income of up to €5,000. In other words, they state that they live on €357/month at best
  • 107,355, approximately 1/6, declare an annual income between €5,001 and €10,920, in the best case they declare what someone who is paid the minimum wage earns.
  • Only 133,000, i.e. about 20%, declare that their annual income is higher than that paid by the minimum wage.

Therefore, the introduction of an “artificial” combatable ceiling, it is clear that it will strengthen the public funds on the one hand, but also improve the externally “controversial” testimony of the freelancers who, for their part, rightly to a certain extent, consider that they have unfairly targeted.

At the same time, the cordon around freelancers will also tighten due to the universal application of myDATA and electronic invoices.

Thus, the expenses that are not declared in myDATA will not be able to be deducted and thus reduce the taxable income. Similarly, the income of the taxpayer cannot fall short of the income resulting from the electronic information that AADE has regarding the total collections of the taxpayer.