Skip to main content
European Commission logo
enen
Strategy and policy
Reform Support

Setting up an independent revenue agency in Greece

AdobeStock_340905887
© EU

Supporting reforms to ensure efficient and effective revenue administration and public financial management

Funding Programme
Year
  • 2016

Setting up an independent revenue agency in Greece

for the national Revenue Authority

The Commission supported national authorities in their efforts to improve the country’s revenue administration.

Context

The Greek authorities wished to establish an independent revenue authority (IAPR) with its own financial, organisational and human resources. The previous systems had limited the performance and efficiency of the national revenue administration.

Support delivered

The Commission has provided extensive technical support for this purpose to Greece for a span of over 10 years, which still continues today, and consists of three main stages:

  • Phase I: redefinition of key performance targets on revenue administration policies in the country;
  • Phase II: focus on building the long-term sustainable strategic and operational autonomy of the IAPR; and
  • Phase III: building enhanced operational and institutional capacity.

Through the TSI, SRSP as well as pre-SRSP instruments, 21 projects supported tax administration and tax policy reforms during these second and third phases.

Different examples of support are listed below:

  • The establishment of a new service responsible for dispute resolution before taxpayers, which resulted in a decline in number of disputes as well as judicial appeals.
  • The implementation of a National Collection Strategy and the definition of the debt collection system. As a result, collection of tax arrears increased by 162% between 2014 and 2018.
  • The redesign of the enterprise architecture, the reengineering of the key business processes, and the preparation towards an IT procurement procedure to prepare the IAPR for a digital transformation through replacement of the outdated core tax IT systems.

Results achieved

Commission's support delivered the following results:

  • establishment of the Independent Agency for Public Revenue on January 1, 2017, while significant progress has been made since then in the operationalisation of the agency itself.

And had the following impact:

  • created an independent public revenue administration;
  • improved the public revenue model that paced the way to a constant growth in Greece’s revenue both through direct and indirect taxes; and
  • established best practice for the set-up of future organisations.