Greece Taxmen to Snoop through Social Media for Clues of Fraud

Greece’s tax inspectors my soon be probing social media accounts in efforts to track down tax evaders and untrustworthy tax payers, Greek daily To Vima reports.

Under the name “Code 24 Hours”, the new action plan has the country’s financial crime squad (SDOE) and inspectors from the General Secretariat for Public Revenue going through Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts in order to “fish” data which may lead to further audits.

According to the same report, more than 1,800,000 Greek residents and enterprises suspected of tax evasion are set to go under scrutiny while the finance ministry has already prepared a specialized audit application currently in pilot phase and set to run next month. The said application will allow investigators to enter a suspect’s tax number and then within 24 hours collect relevant data from all online activity assessing whether a tax audit should continue.

In the meantime, a new property registry which more than 8.5 million taxpayers will be required to join slated to take effect in February 2017 is expected to further improve the tax evasion data collection process.