The General Confederation of Professional Craftsmen and Merchants of Greece (GSEVEE) and the Hellenic Confederation of Trade and Entrepreneurship (ESEE) requested an extension to the process of connecting the cash registers to the POS in a joint letter sent to the Minister of National Economy and Finance Kostis Hatzidakis.

As mentioned in the letter, the representatives of the market have clearly pointed out that the digitization of the Government procedures is not an undertaking that can be done automatically and in any case it can be achieved efficiently and smoothly by simply digitizing the existing procedures and cannot be implemented without taking into account the possibilities of the obligees, whether these concern the necessary knowledge and skills required for digital compliance, or whether they concern the costs of compliance (e.g. cost of purchase and maintenance of POS, bank commissions on transactions, purchase-operation-maintenance of relevant software programs).

“With the difficulties faced by the businesses, there is also a long delay in the upgrade of the POS by the providers, difficulties in connecting and networking them by the suppliers of the cash registers, and in general the inability to serve, due to technical problems, thousands of businesses that must all be interconnected within the next few days. How is it possible to meet tight deadlines when providers are not ready to respond to requests?’ mention in their letter GSEVEE and ESEE.

They also raise a number of issues, such as for table seating in restaurants, which do not have clear regulations and clarifying instructions need to be issued immediately by the ministry, but also the solution of a number of practical problems, such as for example the cancellation of a cash register receipt in order to issue an invoice in case of wholesale transaction and payment by card.

It is also emphasized that the approvals for the vouchers of the last cycle have not been completed, while the 4th cycle is delayed, which will also include the all in one systems for which there is information that they are not yet available from the banks.

Given this, GSEVEE and ESEE request the extension of the process for the interconnection of POS with cash registers for at least 6 months, in order to create the conditions for the smooth compliance of businesses, as businessmen are required to be trained in order to acquire basic knowledge and full financing of the resulting compliance costs (technical upgrades, software, replacement of cash registers, etc.).

GSEVEE and ESEE also ask the Ministry of Finance to examine the issue of E-send and the VAT lock.

For E-send, they believe that the relevant regulatory framework for sanctions should be immediately changed and specifically the necessary technical changes should be made, so that businesses are immediately informed that their receipts are not transmitted via E-send and then within a reasonable period of time to they are requested to correct the technical problem and submit the untransmitted documents. For these cases and as long as they comply with the aforementioned, no fine or other sanction should be imposed. Also to define clear and simple alternative business compliance procedures for cases such as the loss of internet connection or potential damage or malfunctioning of the FEMs. For these cases, no fine should be imposed, while no fine should be imposed on companies that did not submit documents and after the audit it was found that they have not hidden income. Finally, it is necessary to rationalize the existing system of sanctions, which is far from being characterized as reasonable and/or proportionate.

Regarding the VAT lock, GSEVEE and ESEE point out that questions have been raised regarding the implementation from 01/01/2024 of the locked VAT, i.e. the mandatory prefilling of income-expenses when submitting VAT returns based on the data transmitted to myDATA. The platform presents significant technical problems. Therefore, they request the withdrawal of this regulation and that it be implemented as a pilot until all the technical problems presented by the relevant platform are resolved.