Greece is introducing a tax reform to increase efficiency, prevent fraud and close its VAT gap by digitizing its tax system. Although 1 October 2020 had been the intended date for mandatory participation, late changes announced by the tax authority meant only some taxpayers were obliged to use it during 2020. The date has since been delayed by the Greek government several times and will now not be mandatory for all taxpayers (but not all transactions) until November 2021. It’s expected that it will be fully implemented in January 2022.
The new platform offers a collaborative environment where the data provided by businesses to the IAPR will not affect their own books but will also often auto-populate their trading partner’s tax records in myDATA.
Apart from the benefits of the digital tax transformation for businesses, the reform enables the Greek government to have increased visibility over business and financial data and impose audits or penalties where discrepancies arise.
All companies established in Greece that maintain their accounting records in line with the Greek Accountant Standards regardless of their size, form, or their type of accounting books are all in scope and are affected by the reform.
Central to the new reform is the IAPR’s e-books scheme, myDATA, which means my Digital Accounting and Tax Application. It requires trading partners to report a series of accounting data, captured within 17 types of documents under 52 different account classifications, to the IAPR’s digital platform. The IAPR’s digital platform has the same name as the scheme.