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Victoria Mindova

From this week, all bank branches in Greece will start issuing tax cards for citizens. These will be used for purchases of all goods and services in the country. The tax card has two main objectives: the first is to gather information on the minimum turnover of various merchants and companies in the country and the second, according to the Ministry of Finance, is to facilitate the collection of data used for citizens’ cost accounting for tax purposes.

In 2010, Greece enforced a law under which individual persons have to account for 25% of their declared annual income through receipts for their expenditure. This percentage is expected to increase next year, but it is not yet clear what its new value will be. Holding the tax card does not exempt the owner from collecting receipts. The card sends information, on the value of purchases made by a person, directly to the Directorate General "Information" at the Ministry of Finance. Its aim for the most part is to relieve the burden on the tax authorities, but not that on the citizens themselves.

The card is personal and contains the tax number of the person, company or entity offering the relevant product or service, without specifying its type, and the value of the transaction. It is issued by the banks in Greece but it is not related to the banking system and can not be used as a debit or credit card. All citizens can go to any neighbourhood branch of any Greek bank and obtain the tax card for free against his or her tax number. Then, to activate the card, the person has to send an SMS to 54053, which is the number of the Directorate General "Information" at the Ministry of Finance. The message should contain the individual’s tax number, an empty space and then the 19-digit number written on the tax card. The SMS costs € 0.011. Another method of activating the tax card is through online registration at the Directorate General "Information" website:http://link.minfin.gr/karta.

The tax card is compatible with the Point of Sales-POS devices in shops in order to account for the purchases made. At present, issuing the new card is not mandatory, but the government is planning on introducing it to all citizens at the beginning of 2012.

GRReporter did its own research on how ordinary citizens view the introduction of a tax card. The overall opinion is that the measure is irrelevant and inapplicable to many of the shops in the country. In addition, all respondents greatly distrust the ability of the government to protect the personal data entered into the card.

"This tax card is another nuisance of the political governance in Greece and I will not have one unless required by law," explicitly stated a 38-year-old employee of a private company. According to her, the government's plan has serious omissions, mainly because many shops do not have POS systems, such as bakeries, markets, small private shops, which are not part of large chains. Using it will be a problem for those self-employed as masters, dentists, doctors and many others who issue receipts but do not accept credit card payments. "Its existence is meaningless, given that we must continue to collect receipts for the purchases, despite the fact that they are recorded digitally in the card," said the woman.

She believes that the card enables the government and other institutions to "look" not only at the actual transactions, but also at the type of products or goods that people are buying, which could be used for purposes other than tax reporting. This largely reminds her of the big brother from George Orwell’s 1984 and she stresses that the government has no reliable way of guaranteeing the preservation of personal data.