Greece’s Tax Burden Below EU Average, Says ECB’s Mario Draghi
Source: Wall Street Journal
FRANKFURTGreeces tax burden is well below the European average even after rising in recent years, European Central Bank President Mario Draghi wrote in a letter to a Greek lawmaker released on Monday by the ECB.
The tax burden-to-GDP ratio in Greece (including actual social security contributions), at 34.2% in 2013, remains well below both the euro area and the EU-28 average despite some increases in recent years, Mr. Draghi wrote in the letter, dated Jan. 15, to European Parliament member Kostas Chrysogonos.
The Syriza party leader has promised to end the austerity that sent the country into an economic tailspin without causing any catastrophic break with Europe. The release of the letter came hours after Greeces far-left Syriza party was swept to victory in national elections on Sunday, riding a wave of public discontent in Greece over the austerity measures they have been forced to endure by their international creditors in recent years.
Mr. Chrysogonos is a member of Syriza.
Read more: http://www.wsj.com/articles/greeces-tax-burden-below-eu-average-says-ecbs-mario-draghi-1422270733
Greece is an economic basket case because people with money do not pay their taxes and it's the most corrupt country in the EU; it only got into the Eurozone by cooking the books
That kind of wholesale lying about assets, and other eye-popping cases that are surfacing in the news media here, points to the staggering breadth of tax dodging that has long been a way of life here.
Such evasion has played a significant role in Greeces debt crisis, and as the country struggles to get its financial house in order, it is going after tax cheats as never before.
Various studies, including one by the Federation of Greek Industries last year, have estimated that the government may be losing as much as $30 billion a year to tax evasion a figure that would have gone a long way to solving its debt problems.
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Experts point out that ducking taxes is part of a broader culture of bribery and corruption that is deeply entrenched.
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The cheating is often quite bold. When tax authorities recently surveyed the returns of 150 doctors with offices in the trendy Athens neighborhood of Kolonaki, where Prada and Chanel stores can be found, more than half had claimed an income of less than $40,000. Thirty-four of them claimed less than $13,300, a figure that exempted them from paying any taxes at all.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/02/world/europe/02evasion.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
In return for the biggest bailout in global financial history rescue funds from the EU and IMF amounting to 240bn (£188bn) it was hoped that old mentalities would change and a nation humbled by near-bankruptcy would finally dump its culture of deceit.
Neither has happened. Instead, with rising poverty and runaway unemployment, malfeasance and mistrust remain widespread. Anti-corruption officials continue to be on the take while the self-employed, not least shopkeepers on popular tourist isles, fail to declare their true income.
Transparency International said on Wednesday that Greeces ranking on perceived levels of public corruption was still the worst in the EU albeit on a par with Italy even if it had improved from 94th place at the height of the debt crisis in 2012 to 69th this year.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/03/greece-corruption-alive-and-well
Most of the differences in the revised budget deficit numbers were due to a temporary change of accounting practices by the new government, i.e., recording expenses when military material was ordered rather than received.[126] However, it was the retroactive application of ESA95 methodology (applied since 2000) by Eurostat, that finally raised the reference year (1999) budget deficit to 3.38% of GDP, thus exceeding the 3% limit. This led to claims that Greece (similar claims have been made about other European countries like Italy[127][128][129]) had not actually met all five accession criteria, and the common perception that Greece entered the Eurozone through "falsified" deficit numbers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greece#Eurozone_entry