By Chrysostomos Tsoufis

The AADE may have made literal leaps in recent years in terms of improving taxpayers’ daily lives and simplifying communication with them, but there are still significant areas of bureaucracy.

One of them is the issuance of certificates LIGHT for inheritances of dying relatives, a process which, as it is done now, probably brings out the image of an… insensitive state. It is not enough that the taxpayer is devastated by the loss of his loved one, he must also get involved in an endless process that in some cases can take up to 5 or 6 years. Especially in the tax offices of Attica, as AADE officials admit, there are whole stacks of taxpayers’ applications for the issuance of ENFIA certificates.

This picture is expected to change drastically by the end of July, at the latest at the beginning of August. Then, by decision of the head of Giorgos Pitsilis, the AADE will launch a new electronic platform for the issuance of ENFIA certificate of the deceased through notaries.

All the heir has to do is sign a declaration of consent for the notary to take over the process. The notary, after collecting all the legalization documents required, will enter the application with his codes and issue the certificates. In this way, the obstacle of locking the deceased’s tax identification number will be overcome.

Today, the ENFIA certificate as well as the responsible declaration are issued exclusively electronically from the AADE online application through the OPS Portfolio to a natural or legal person, an active user of Taxisnet services, with their personal codes, for each A.T.AK. separately.

However, in the case of deceased persons, the certificate or the responsible declaration, as the case may be, is granted by the competent supervisor D.O.Y., to which a relevant application is submitted. Specifically, the applicable procedures stipulate that an application to the head of the D.O.Y is required exclusively and only in the following cases:

i. Certificate issued for deceased persons.

ii. Certificate which is granted to a legal entity that has stopped its operations.

iii. Certificate which is granted to a bankruptcy trustee, since it is not possible to issue the certificate electronically.

iv. Certificate issued to the liquidator of a legal entity in liquidation, if it is not possible to issue the certificate electronically.

n. Certificate which is granted to an executor of a will or to a liquidator of an inheritance if it is not possible to issue the certificate electronically.

vi. Certificate which is granted withholding of the corresponding tax.

vii. A certificate which is granted to a person who has been authorized to receive it with a special power of attorney, since it is not possible to issue the certificate electronically.

viii. A certificate which is granted after the issuance of a definitive act of corrective tax assessment after an audit as mentioned in article 7 hereof.

ix. Certificate which is granted in extraordinary cases, when there is a complete failure of the computerized system for its electronic issue, following a decision of the Capital and Assets Tax Implementation Directorate of A.A.D.E.

The application is available on the AADE website in the catalog of forms section and is submitted digitally through the “My Applications” application.

Alternatively, if the application cannot be submitted digitally from the “My Applications” application and must be done in paper form, after downloading the file from the AADE website, taxpayers can complete and print it and after signing it to file it in the D.O.Y Protocol, either in person or by post. In these cases, the visa of the original signature is required, unless the application is filed in person in the protocol of the D.O.Y.