Greece’s first-ever “tax receipt lottery” debuted on Thursday, years after the idea was first proposed as a way of boosting efforts to curb tax evasion by shops, businesses and self-employed professionals.
Receipts from credit card, debit card and e-banking transactions with registered businesses completed last month were entered into the drawing, all total more than 8.25 million transactions, which translated into 1,074,332,777 receipts being entered into the electronic drawing.
According to figures released in the afternoon by the independent Public Revenues Authority, the transactions corresponded to more than 4.55 million personal tax code numbers in the country, i.e. individual taxpayers, and were of a total value of more than 2.093 billion euros.
Each drawing will result in 1,000 winners each awarded 1,000 euros, tax-free and immune from any third party demands.
Taxpayers, or their accountants, must enter the tax bureau’s online platform (Taxisnet) with their passwords to see if they have a notification indicating a 1,000-euro prize.
