Greece struggles to address its tax evasion problem
The new government of Greece, led by Alexis Tsipras, has promised to tackle tax evasion. It hopes this strategy will yield a3bn ($3.4bn) in the coming months in order to cover part of the cost of its a12bn Thessaloniki anti-austerity programme. This would entail various measures - a gradual increase in the minimum wage to reach a750, an extra month's income for pensioners receiving less than a700 a month, and various welfare benefits - to help the most vulnerable members of the community.
"If this government thinks it can change the system in a few weeks it is underestimating how complicated it is to collect tax in Greece," says Haris Theoharis, narrowly elected to parliament for the centrist To Potami party. Between January 2013 and June 2014 he was secretary general for public revenue, a job imposed on the then conservative New Democracy government by the country's creditors, increasingly irritated by slow progress against fraud and tax dodging.
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