Almost half a million cash registers and POS terminals have now been connected to Greece’s tax authority, the Independent Authority for Public Revenue (AADE), creating an electronic network around transactions that, until a few years ago, were largely invisible to the tax administration. The effect is already showing up in state coffers: in the first half of 2026, VAT revenues rose by 13.1%, or €1.69 billion, compared with the same period in 2025, while the VAT gap, which for years was one of the biggest holes in tax revenue, has more than halved.

This is one of the biggest changes to have been funded and accelerated through Greece’s Recovery and Resilience Fund, known as Greece 2.0. The linking of cash registers and POS terminals is a Recovery Fund reform carried out by AADE, with the core aim of ensuring that every card payment is tied to the issuing of the corresponding tax receipt. In simple terms, it should no longer be possible to take a payment on a POS terminal without leaving a matching tax trail on the till and in the tax authority’s systems.

A new approach

So far, 489,370 cash registers and POS terminals have been linked. Behind that figure lies a substantial shift in how the market is monitored. The transaction amount now passes from the till to the POS terminal, and the completion of the payment is electronically linked to the issuing of the receipt, narrowing the scope for money to be taken without the corresponding document being issued.

The same electronic network includes myDATA, the online platform to which businesses transmit their transaction data and from which AADE draws information for VAT returns. Since 2025, the permitted margins of discrepancy between declared figures and data submitted to the platform have also been scrapped. In practice, a transaction now leaves multiple electronic traces that can be cross-checked: what was rung up on the till, what was paid by card, what was recorded in the electronic books, and what was ultimately declared to the tax authority. The more closely these systems are linked, the less room there is for turnover to differ from one stage to the next.

VAT gap

Citing the European Commission’s latest report, AADE puts Greece’s VAT gap at 11.4% for 2023, with the forecast for 2024 bringing it down to 9%. Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis put the VAT gap at the same level, telling parliament on 10 July that the improvement in state revenues was linked not only to economic growth but also to the crackdown on tax evasion.

The same trend has continued into 2026. In the first half of the year, VAT receipts rose by €1.69 billion, or 13.1%, compared with the same period in 2025. That increase cannot, of course, be attributed entirely to the fight against tax evasion.

Revenues are also affected by economic growth, consumption, prices and tourism. AADE’s own analysis, however, shows that improved compliance now has a measurable share in the rise in receipts.

Electronic cross-checking

For businesses, this also means a change in the nature of tax inspections themselves. The tax authority no longer needs to wait for a complaint or open a company’s books to establish that something does not add up.

Data from POS terminals, tills and myDATA can be compared electronically, with discrepancies fed into AADE’s risk-analysis systems so that inspections are directed towards cases with stronger indications of concealed turnover. The electronic picture is completed by digital delivery notes and electronic invoicing. AADE is thus building a view not only of the final payment, but of an increasingly large part of a transaction’s whole journey: from the movement of goods and the issuing of the document, through to payment and, ultimately, the tax return. This also has a second, purely fiscal, dimension. The more real turnover is declared and taxed, the more revenue can be collected without new taxes.

AADE itself attributed the more than €2 billion overshoot of the 2025 tax revenue target to improved voluntary tax compliance and more effective action against tax evasion and smuggling.