Freelancers: Ebooks are changing the E3 form

Guided by e-books, the E3 form will be pre-filled this year for approximately 1 million businesses and professionals, radically changing the tax procedure for business activity.

It is essentially a new form with pre-populated the income and expenditure columns, additional information on the company’s active bank accounts and POS but also with new codes for reinforcements and exemptions.

The form will capture the “image” of the electronic books with the data held by the debtors in myDATA, based on the presumptive income calculated by Independent Public Revenue Authority (AADE) from business activity. However, the figures will not be written in stone as taxpayers will be given the opportunity to proceed with amendments.

However, the questioning of the assumed income by freelancers necessarily leads to submission of an application for an audit or for objective reasons (military service, hospitalization, pregnancy, etc.) on the platform that AADE will open in first fortnight of May.

The AADE decision providing instructions for the type and content of this year’s E3 form states the following:

• The E3 is submitted together with the timely and overdue initial and amending declarations with the forms “E1” (Income Tax Declaration of natural persons) and “N” (Income Tax Declaration of legal persons and legal entities).

• AADE has pre-populated income and expenditure categories with amounts in the relevant codes of the respective tables based on the data transmitted to the myDATA digital platform. Since the relevant expenses have not previously been characterized in the myDATA digital platform, all expenses are pre-filled in code 585 (“Miscellaneous Operating Expenses”) of the “Total” column, in option 016 of the relevant Subtable.

• The correct and accurate completion of Form E3 constitutes an obligation and responsibility of the taxpayer. The pre-completion of the codes of Form E3 is intended to facilitate the taxpayer and is not binding for him. The pre-filled amounts in the codes of the E3 form can be modified by the taxpayer.

• In the cases of spouses and natural persons who have entered into a cohabitation agreement and submit a joint declaration for their incomes, the E3 form is submitted for each of the spouses/parties of the cohabitation agreement where this is required for their individual incomes.

• In case of cessation of operations and commencement within the same tax year, a statement of financial data from business activity for the entire tax year is submitted.

• It is not foreseen to submit the E3 form with a reservation, since the reservation concerns only the content of the income tax return (E1 or N form, as the case may be).

• The statement of financial data from business activity is submitted once for the entire business, regardless of the number of branches and branches.

• The person liable to submit a statement of financial data from a business activity completes the tables that concern him.

• Any change that occurred in the state of the business during the tax year cannot be declared on the E3 form if it has not previously been declared to the Registry Department of the service responsible for receiving the declaration.

• In the case of natural persons, the E3 is submitted by those obtaining income from business activity for the needs of accounting determination of the result, regardless of the obligation to maintain appropriate accounting records (books and data).

• For non-profit legal entities, the E3 form is submitted when they obtain income from business transactions, while in the case that they have income only from capital and capital transfer capital gains, as well as when they obtain non-taxable income, they submit the form without indicating amounts.

At the same time, the following changes have been made to the E3 form:

• -added to entity size criteria a new line “Average Number of Full-Time Employees Hired by Another Business”

• added emergency temporary support to farmers and SMEs affected by the effects of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, EU aid under the “Temporary framework for State aid measures to support the economy following Russia’s attack on Ukraine » and the granting of an increased deduction for expenses related to a green economy, energy and digitization made in the tax years 2023, 2024 and 2025.

Reportage: Kostas Tsavalos