Greek society and the people in particular who usually face the tax burden are tired and angered from reading about grandiose plans to tackle tax evasion, which are either nether implemented or end up forgotten. In the past years there have been dozens of such plans that turned out to be unrealistic and impractical.
Now they discovered social media, Google and technology to cover for their disorganization and primarily lack of political will to implement the obvious. We constant hear about the battles against tax evasion in fuel, cigarettes and customs, but there is no result. As if they need to invent gunpowder to fight the scourge of tax theft.
The online connection of cash registers and generalized use of credit and debit cards is being delayed, but the government luminaries will catch the tax evaders from Facebook. The people are suffering from excessive taxation and, as evident by the latest div, revenue is worse off than last years, despite the VAT hike. Everyone who happened to go on vacation could see this since most businesses avoid issuing receipts for their services.
The people have no incentive to ask for receipts, business owners have a powerful counter-incentive to issue receipts and as such tax evasion remains rampant, despite the ministerial rulings. With this tax system, which sucks the greatest portion of revenue from honest customers and traders, the economy will never prosper, nor will public finances recover.
With this attitude prevailing, we will constantly hear about pointless battles against tax theft and then agonize over how we will avoid new measures needed to cover the budget deficits. Common sense and the political will are necessary to implement a practical and fair tax system, which other countries have implemented for decades.
It seems though that in Greece common sense and political will are in short supply among those respectively in power.
TO VIMA
