Closing the curtain on personal tax returns opens the way for fixes on the imputed income of the self-employed and freelancers. The first scenarios for lifting the criteria for determining the minimum presumptive income of freelancers are on the table of the economic staff until the end of August.
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who opened the possibility for improvements and moves to solve possible injustices, is likely to give the TIF a seal of interventions to be implemented in the fall.
Without changing the basic body of the presumptive system for calculating the minimum taxable income of the 735,000 freelancers and the self-employed, the interventions to be evaluated are related to the turnover criterion based on increasing the presumptive income, but also to the criterion of payroll costs that, especially in cases of sole proprietorships that employ personnel with many years of employment, can greatly increase the imputed income.
It is also possible that family income will be taken into account, with improvements in the process of countering the minimum presumptive income and with a “cut” of the burden caused by the adjustment of the minimum. wages, which is the basis for calculating the minimum presumptive income. The increase in the minimum wage from 780 to 830 euros raises the minimum presumptive taxable income from 10,920 euros in 2023 to 11,620 euros in 2024.
According to the Deputy Minister of Finance, Christos Dimas, the changes will be made before the end of the year so that there will be enough time for AADE to adapt its systems to the new data, for the submission of tax returns in next year. The plan of the Ministry of Finance predicts the start of the period for submitting tax returns from March 1, 2025, with a “locked” schedule with no extensions until June 30 each year.
The tax on clearances will destroy the counters
With the help of changes in the way freelancers are taxed in this year’s tax returns, income taxes will reach 4.6 billion euros from 3.8 billion euros last year. From the liquidation of the 6,545,434 returns submitted, it appears that 35% of the returns are owed by taxpayers who pay additional tax for 2023 income that reaches 2,000 euros on average.
Last year 47% of freelancers paid taxes up to 1,000 euros and 27% from 1,000-3,000 euros and this year, according to the calculations of the Ministry of National Economy and Finance, 17% will pay 1,000 euros and 54% will pay from 1,000 -3,000 euros. These calculations were done on paper before the submission of tax returns and now they are calculated, based on real data.