Editorial: The great reform on txa invoices

21:00 2/8/2019 - Πηγή: In.gr

The finance ministry in the third quarter of 2019 will launch a pilot programme regarding the electronic declarations of invoices and companies’ bookkeeping.

The aim is to create a framework for the mandatory electronic submission of invoices and bookkeeping for all businesses and freelance professionals, as of 1 January, 2020.

The finance

ministry’s mechanism for the electronic submission and registrations of invoices will be opened to public consultation with professional groups as of September, 2019, so that proposals for improvements can be submitted in a timely manner and so that certain technical and other difficulties in implementation can be addressed.

The said change to the extent that it was supported and served without exceptions and postponements constitutes a great reform and a leap of progress that will gradually lead to a full digitalisation of all transactions.

In a future stage it will allow for electronic payments and the immediate auditing and evaluation of corporate balance sheets.That will create unprecedented transparency for economic transactions nationwide.

Even now, the benefits from the limited use of electronic transactions through debit and credit cards (without cash) are patently obvious and citizens see that in their daily lives.

The expansion of electronic declarations and of the improvement of the management of invoices from all businesses will minimise the administrative cost of handling tax obligations.

It will allow the immediate abolition of concentrated lists of data on all invoices (as each will be reviewed online individually).

It will allow an estimate of owed taxes – especially the VAT tax – and it will facilitate the corroboration of transactions, with gains in combating tax evasion and tax avoidance.

Conditions mandate this reform and it can bolster the more general effort to streamline tax and other obligations.

If it is applied without exception and with a broader rationalisation of the tax system and with the reduction of the overall tax burden, it can work.

If all invoices are digitised and all transactions can be corroborated, one can base possibly premature declarations, such as the presumptive income of an enterprise, on that and one no longer needs outdated auditing methods.

Antiquated processes can be abolished for all these transactions. They include the a priori income of a business and the so called “objective criteria” for calculating taxes which were anything but objective.

The wager is whether one can achieve a faithful and comprehensive, without exception, implementation of the measure.

Simply put, every exception undermines the effectiveness and the utility of any change.