The adoption of Law 4949/2022 in the section "...urgent tax and customs regulations and other urgent provisions..."

In particular, Article 60 provides for an extension of the submission of applications - and therefore the operation - of the Committee for the Extrajudicial Settlement of Tax Disputes.

In this context, on 11 August the relevant ministerial decision was published (114268 EX 2022, Government Gazette B' 4282-11.08.2022) by which in fulfillment of the amendments brought by article 60 of Law 4949/2022 to article 16 of Law 4714/2020, "revived" the operation of the Committee for the Extrajudicial Resolution of Tax Disputes.

In particular:

j) the scope of tax cases that can be submitted to the Commission has been extended and now includes any case pending before the administrative courts (Courts of First Instance, Courts of Appeal, CoE) that has not been heard by 29-7-2022, compared to the previous provision where cases pending until 31-12-2020 were included.

(j) the possibility of submitting applications to the Commission has been activated with a new deadline of 31-12-2022

(iii) and the deadline for the completion of the examination of cases before the Commission (both those already pending and those to be introduced by 31-12-2022) was extended from 30 September 2022 to 30 June 2023 and the deadline for the adoption of the out-of-court settlement minutes was extended from 30 November 2022 to 29 September 2023.

Any tax case pending up to 29-7-2022 with the following requests/reasons may be included in this committee:

1. Limitation of the right of the State to impose the tax or fine in question due to the expiry of the time within which the Tax Administration was entitled to impose it.

2. Limitation of the right of the State to impose the tax or fine at issue due to the receipt of a tax certificate without reservation.

3. Incorrect assessment of the tax or fine due to a manifest lack of tax liability or an arithmetical error.

4. Retrospective application of the most favourable tax sanction in accordance with what has been accepted by the case law of the CoE.

5. Reduction of additional tax, interest, surcharges and fines.

Of these, requests 1 to 4 must be included in the application before the competent court in order to be admissible, while request 5 is granted independently.

The provision also covers cases for which an application was submitted and rejected by the Commission on formal grounds, with a new application being submitted by 31-12-2022.

Bringing a pending case before the Commission has particular advantages, in particular in cases where there is a ground for limitation, manifest error or retroactive application of a lighter sanction, as the applicant can obtain a prompt and irrevocable resolution of the case in a much shorter period than the time required for the judicial procedure.

At the same time, it is also particularly beneficial for cases that do not have a substantial chance of success in the Court, in which a reduction of fines and surcharges can be achieved in case of a one-time payment of the amount in dispute, otherwise it can be regulated from 2 up to 24 instalments with a smaller reduction depending on the number of instalments selected, which will be interest-free.

Noteworthy is the case of fines for violations of the Code, where through the cumulative application of the lighter sanction and the 75% deduction, the results can be spectacular and lead to the reduction of fines of huge amounts even to the amount of only 500 euros!

Two central observations are, on the one hand, that for each tax case in which several tax acts have been challenged in a single pleading, the taxpayer can only reconcile individually and independently only some of them, and on the other hand, that this reconciliation does not constitute a confession of the attributed infringement and a precedent for the party administered, as this was explicitly clarified recently with CoE 2467/2022.

Finally, it should be stressed that the taxpayer introduces his tax case to the Commission without prior waiver of his pleading before the competent Court and it is considered closed, for the tax operations which he will choose to settle, only if he accepts the Commission's proposal and pays the specified amount on the basis of a written settlement within the specified time limit.

Otherwise, if the Commission's proposal is rejected, his case, the progress of which was suspended while it was pending before the Commission, will continue as normal before the Court of Justice without any loss of rights.

The procedure is carried out entirely electronically by drawing up and filing a separate pleading-request for conciliation and attaching all the required documents and supporting documents.

The submission must be made by a lawyer, while it is recommended that the competent accountant-technical/financial advisor be consulted in order to ensure that the financial requests to the Commission are correctly and fully formulated.

"High surgery" in tax matters too!