The General Secretariat of Public Revenue’s creation of a service to handle taxpayers’ complaints was created seven months ago to protect citizens who felt that they had been wronged by the Greek Tax Office. Unfortunately, the procedure has turned into a trap for many citizens who take recourse here. Staff shortages have caused eight in 10 applications for tax submission revisions to be turned away and the examination of protests that are lodged are inadequately handled.

In the first six months, 5,435 cases were submitted for examination at the service that only has 50 employees who need to finish the review of the complaint within 60 days. As a result, only 584 applications could be processed (just one in ten) in favor of the taxpayer, whereas 1,779 applications were rejected and over half of the complaints, 2,754 in total, were turned away without an examination as required by the law that went into effect on January 1, 2014.

Furthermore, tax officers working in the complaints department are simple tax accountants that don’t have the required legal knowledge to make rulings and often show bias in favor of decisions already imposed in the fear that they would otherwise be accused of allowing “tax fraud”.