Freelancers: “time limit” for activating IRIS – what are the penalties

600,000 freelancers have until the end of next week to activate the IRIS direct payment system.

Otherwise, they face an independent fine of €1,500, and those who fail to declare a business account to the Greek Tax Authority will be subject to an additional administrative fine of €1,000. The Treasury has ruled out another extension and plans to gradually roll out IRIS to all businesses by March 2025.

Under the new tax laws, freelancers, traders and self-employed individuals will obliged make and accept instant cardless payments with direct transfer of money to the recipient's account via mobile (smartphone), tablet or computer of the client/consumer. To do this, a self-employed specialist will need to register his business account in the remote banking system or in the bank’s mobile application so that the money he receives can be credited to him.

Likewise, the consumer must declare before using the service from which account the money he wants to transfer or pay will go. In physical stores or offices, the consumer logs into the banking application from a smartphone and enters the VAT number, mobile phone number or email of the specialist or business to whom he must pay.

In addition, the company can post a QR code that the client can scan. According to the latest available data, direct payments are growing by leaps and bounds: the number of registered IRIS users has exceeded 2.6 million, of which more than 405,000 have signed up since January, representing growth of approximately 18.5% over 4 months. Besides:

• From the start of 2024 to April, there were 111,000 IRIS Person to Business transactions, up from just 11,000 last year.
• A third of self-employed and individual entrepreneurs – i.e. 280,000 out of a total of about 900,000 have registered in the system, as another 125,000 were added to the 150,000 users in 2023 (an increase of about 80%).

In addition, Kostis Hatzidakis recommended that banks increase the daily limit for consumers to use the IRIS system to EUR 500 for transfers to individuals and EUR 500 for payments to businesses (for a total of EUR 1,000 per day, up from the current EUR 500).

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