Naftemporiki — An early summer tax “safari” by inspectors of the relevant independent public revenues authority has reportedly turned up numerous infractions by high-end hotels and rented rooms.
Specifically, 712 businesses were audited, with quarterly VAT remittance statements that were submitted by July 31, 2017 compared with vacancies rates for the previous months. Tax inspectors, according to reports, scoured booking search engines, the businesses’ own websites, called up hotels posing as customers to inquire about rates and availability and even visited the inspected businesses to ask for a better rate.
The seven worst “offenders” from the sample included four hotels, with more than 300 rooms each, that reportedly post a divergence between calculated and declared revenues exceeding one million euros for the specific quarter. Two of the hotels are on the island of Rhodes; another is on Corfu, and the fourth in southwestern mainland Greece.
Two units, one east of Athens proper, and the other on iconic Santorini showed zero VAT remittances for the second quarter of 2007.
