The citizens’ response to the debt settlement of up to 36 or 72 monthly installments for debts created in the period from 1-11-2021 to 1-2-2023 was low.
According to data available to the Ministry of Finance and the Independent Public Revenue Authority (AADE), the number of taxpayers who managed to participate in the program by 31-7-2023, when the relevant deadline expired, amounted to approximately 13,000, while the total amount of debts settled reached 250 million euros.
The total number of debtors amounts to 4,471,762 and their debts reach 104.8 billion euros. In other words, it turns out that the new regulation benefited a very small number of taxpayers, and the state will raise small amounts of tax arrears, which is a “drop in the ocean” of the total overdue debts to the tax authorities. In fact, these meager amounts will gradually flow into the state’s coffers, over a time horizon of up to six years, given that the regulation provides for the payment of debts in either 36 or 72 monthly installments.
The reason is that the specific regulation was decided and passed not with the intention of actually helping a large number of taxpayers with accumulated unsustainable overdue and unregulated tax debts since the memoranda or the pandemic, but with the intention of rewarding only a few taxpayers who could be consistent in paying their debts to the tax authorities until the energy crisis broke out.
