By Chrysostomos Tsoufis

The “clock” on the AADE website runs backwards and at midnight it reaches zero, and therefore the deadline for the Submission of tax returns.

According to the latest data from AADE, approximately 70,000 natural persons still have not pressed the submission button (by 6 pm on Thursday, 6.4 million declarations had been submitted and 87,000 remained.) according to AADE’s calculations.

The majority of these 70,000 declarations concern freelancers who, either due to “tradition” or due to objective difficulties, belong to those of the last minute. A late tax return results in a fine of €100-€500.

As it becomes clear, with these numbers, there is no reason for a new extension, as the Ministry of Finance emphasizes, in which they also feel a kind of “justification” since the numbers finally “came out” despite the fierce reactions of the tax experts’ federation.

They feel justified in the Ministry of Finance and regarding the part of presumptive taxation of the self-employed.

Despite strong reactions from the self-employed, many of whom have seen their bills “inflate”, the figures say that only 3 out of a thousand question the tax they are entitled to.

Of the 659,000 self-employed and self-employed tax returns, only 367,619 fall within the presumption.

291,381 have self-declared larger amounts than the presumed ones.

Of the 367,619 only 3,471 have expressed an intention to challenge.

Analysis of the latest figures shows that of the 6.36 million tax returns submitted, 45.9% are zero.

19.45%, about 1/5, are credit. The resulting average tax refund is €357.2

34.65%, a little more than 1/3 are debit.

The total tax payable currently stands at €4.22bn and the average tax to be paid is €1,916 which is a record.

Last year the average tax was €1,585 and €1,377 in 2022. And it is not excluded that the remaining 100,000 will raise the average tax even above €2,000.

The increase in incomes due to growth and of course the imputed taxation of freelancers are the 2 reasons that lead to the increase in revenue to public coffers.

AADE has done the appropriate preparatory work so that this year’s tax refunds as well as offsets are made even faster compared to what was the case last year.

€205 million has already been refunded to 941,000 aware and debt-free taxpayers.

The average refund amount resulting from the processing of the data is €218.

According to AADE’s plan, those who do not have debts will see the refund money in their accounts within a week of submitting their tax return.

The offsets of the tax to be refunded with any existing debts are also fast.

The central nettings – which take place on the 1st and 3rd day of every month centrally – are approximately 461,500 and through them €121.6 million have been awarded to the beneficiaries.

Locally, 32,000 offsets have been made by the DOUs and 18.9 million euros have been returned.

In total, 9 out of 10 offsets and tax refunds have been completed, with the counter reading more than €345m going back into the taxpayers’ pockets.