Greece’s tax authority sets up a digital net for influencers: How the tax office “sees” social media income before it’s declared

The tax authorities nary longer hold for income from social media collaborations and advertizing to beryllium declared. They tin already spot it. Through a afloat interconnected integer system, payments made for promoting products and services are recorded and cross-checked astir successful existent time, creating a “net” that limits the scope for undeclared income.

The Annual Report 2025 and Planning 2026 of Independent Authority for Public Revenue outlines the modulation to this caller audit model. More than 1.22 cardinal businesses transmit information via ERP systems, portion invoice transmissions scope 795 cardinal done ERP and transcend 2.25 cardinal done e-invoicing providers. In practice, astir each invoice issued leaves a integer footprint and tin beryllium audited.

This representation is complemented by the wide digitalization of the narration betwixt citizens, businesses, and the taxation authority. Over 9.5 cardinal declarations and certificates were submitted digitally wrong a year, portion hundreds of thousands of requests and transactions are handled electronically. This means less and less information points stay extracurricular the system.

This integer footprint is the halfway instrumentality for audits. When a concern pays for advertising, promotion, oregon collaboration, the magnitude is mandatorily recorded digitally and linked to a circumstantial taxation ID number. If the corresponding income does not look oregon is declared astatine a little amount, a discrepancy is automatically generated. The strategy detects the quality without requiring a ailment oregon on-site inspection.

These cross-checks present signifier the starting constituent of audits. Cases are not opened randomly, but wherever a “gap” emerges betwixt income and expenses. The process whitethorn statesman with a compliance notification and escalate to a afloat taxation audit.

The study besides highlights the standard of enforcement. In 2025, much than 290,000 audits and investigations were carried out, with assessed taxes and fines reaching €3.1 billion. At the aforesaid time, tens of thousands of on-site inspections and targeted compliance actions were conducted, confirming that the integer strategy operates alongside accepted audits.

The caller exemplary goes beyond invoices. The taxation authorization uses information from aggregate sources: slope transactions, POS payments, booking and rental platforms, arsenic good arsenic information from integer applications that grounds concern activity. The extremity is to make a broad “digital profile” for each taxpayer.

This illustration aggregates income, expenses, transactions, and assets. Algorithms observe antithetic discrepancies, specified arsenic debased declared income combined with precocious depletion oregon continuous payments from businesses. These cases are categorized by hazard level and go audit targets.

At the aforesaid time, the taxation authorization is strengthening the strategy with caller tools specified arsenic the Digital Delivery Note and the Digital Client Registry, which let real-time signaling of transactions and activities. Using this information enables not lone the detection of taxation evasion but besides its prevention.

The effect is simply a afloat interconnected physics audit web that drastically limits the anticipation of undeclared income. And arsenic collaboration payments walk done businesses that transmit everything digitally, it becomes progressively hard for income to “disappear” on the way.