From the beginning of the year, freelancers and owners of individual businesses will find themselves in a suffocating tax cord from three different directions, in the all-out war that the Ministry of National Economy and Finance has declared in order to limit as much as possible the extensive tax evasion in the sector.

The first level in the direction of tax compliance is the change in the way of taxation of freelancers and sole proprietorships, which until today, in the vast majority, were invulnerable to the Tax Office, since they declared incomes of starvation.

The second line of “attack” against tax evasion will be the release of powers in the AADE, in order to focus the controls where a large volume of hidden tax material is actually located, so that they have a greater quantitative effect. As officials at AADE note, until today we were forced to check – on a sample basis – a large volume of taxpayers, but from now on this perimeter will be limited and the checks will be more focused.

Third in the series, but not in terms of importance, is the interconnection of cash registers with POS as well as the extension of its use to all economic activity. The Minister of National Economy and Finance Kostis Hatzidakis, in fact, with his statements in the middle of the week, hastened to close any discussion about the possibility of a new extension in the implementation of the measure.

The taxation of freelancers from 2024 changes the level and nothing will be the same as what we have known until now. According to top officials of the ministry and the AADE, until today the vast majority who declared zero or very low incomes were in a peculiar tax immunity, unless they were caught in the nets of sample checks. This, as they say, ceases to exist and the incomes that will be declared from now on will approximate the real ones.

At the same time, the same officials report that the most challenging thing is that a significant number of the specific taxpayers were receiving all kinds of benefits intended for the vulnerable social groups, essentially depriving others who really need them of the opportunity to receive them.

As characteristically mentioned by Deputy Minister of National Economy and Finance Haris Theocharis, it is a mild reform that at the same time restores tax justice to a certain extent.

Let’s take a look at the changes in the way of taxation:

1. Calculation of the minimum wage: Its amount cannot be less than the greater of the minimum basic wage increased by 10% for every 3 years of work as self-employed after the first 3 years and the highest annual wage of up to 30,000 euros that the freelancer pays to his staff. For the calculation of the minimum wage, any income from salaried work of the self-employed is taken into account.

2. Payroll costs. The minimum wage is increased by an amount equal to 10% of the annual payroll costs (salary, employer contributions, benefits in kind) of the staff employed by the self-employed in his business, with a maximum of 15,000 euros.

3. Turnover. When the annual turnover of the self-employed person is significantly higher than the average annual turnover of the KAD, the minimum wage income is incrementally increased with an upper limit of 50,000 euros.

According to the Ministry of National Economy, with the changes in income taxation for 473,000 professionals there will be an additional charge of 1,444 euros on average, 124,000 will not have any change in their statement, while 138,000 will have a relief of 560 euros due to the reduction of the business fee.

It is noted that today only 4% of the self-employed pay 50% of the taxes of the specific professional class, while with the new system 50% of the taxes will be paid by 12% of the taxpayers.

Finally, from March 1, 2024, all cash registers will be connected to POS terminals. The process of registering all terminals in the POS Registry has already begun, with the AADE imposing the obligation on all businesses that use terminal devices, whether domestic or foreign, to ensure the accuracy of the data concerning them, which were declared by the providers on the AADE digital portal.