ATHENS – While civil service offices haven’t been closed yet in Greece over the COVID-19 Coronavirus, taxpayers and residents were told not to make visits to tax or customs offices or the General Chemical State Laboratory.

The Independent Authority for Public Revenue (IAPR) said transactions in almost all cases will be done only through the mail, em-mail or over the phone although it wasn’t said how the offices would then cope with likely scores of thousands of calls to offices already tough to reach on the phone before the move.

IAPR chief Giorgos Pitsilis said under the decision, to be published in the Government Gazette, people must visit these services in person only if absolutely necessary without defining what that would be or how it could be enforced otherwise.

The list of e-mail addresses and public service telephone numbers for use during the period of the coronavirus emergency were to be posted on the IAPR website (www.aade.gr) with no word on whether the deadline for filing taxes would be changed as of yet.