Mr. Tasos is a 75-year-old retired civil servant who inherited the house in an affluent suburb of Athens where he grew up; a crumbling, 20-square-meter, single story house from the turn of the previous century, where he lives with his wife. In recent years he has reached an impasse as he has been called to pay a real estate tax equal to half his annual pension. He has repeatedly gone to his local tax office to come to a settlement, to no avail though: the tax inspector urged him to sell his house in order to pay his bills.
There are hundreds of thousands who have suffered dearly and unjustly from the Merkel-derived tax raid. Not only did they spend their few savings to pay for the emergency levies and taxes, but they also saw their pensions halved; pensions which they paid for with contributions when they worked. Hundreds of thousands were forced to cut everything to pay tax installments, loans and insurance contributions, they even had to hand over their license plates because they cannot pay for road tax.
Based on the European election results, about 800,000 of those who had voted for the coalition government parties voted for another party in the recent elections. They wanted to send a message of discontent to the government because they increased the heating oil tax six times with the excuse of combating oil smuggling and yet two years later they have not taken any steps to install an inflow-outflow monitoring system at gas stations and fuel distribution companies in order to control the smuggling.
These 800,000 citizens turned their back on the coalition government because even today the cash registers have not been connected to the Ministry of Finances so that the VAT is instantly paid out in each transaction, as is the case in Portugal; because they have not given any tax incentives for citizens to demand a receipt from plumbers, teachers, doctors and lawyers, so that employees and pensions end up bearing the brunt of taxation, while the self-employed carry on with the tax evasion party.
Mr. Samaras said that he received the message from the ballot box and that he will correct the injustices. Mr. Tasos though, who voted for New Democracy all his life, decided to abstain from the European elections.
Notis Papadopoulos
