The more Greece squeezes citizens with pay cuts, tax hikes and slashed pensions, the more they can’t pay, with government statistics showing that the list of debtors grew in October by 101,425, bringing the total to 3,182,477 – one-third of the country – which owes the state money they either can’t afford to pay or are evading.
That comes as the Greek Finance Ministry is going to issue orders to freeze and seize bank accounts of debtors and the government mulls whether to put major tax cheats in jail as it’s being pressured by international lenders putting up $325 billion in two bailouts to get tough on bringing in additional revenues.
The debtors owe the state taxes and fines of 381 million euros ($524.46 million) adding to the pile of some 62.88 billion euros ($88.56 billion) that is owed by those who can’t pay because they don’t have the money and tax cheats who have deliberately avoided paying.
The list of people being chased includes people who have died, enterprises that have gone bankrupt and state companies (which owe the most to tax authorities).
Some 39.89 billion euro ($54.88 billion) are corporate debts, with the remaining 22.98 billion euros ($31.61 billion) being owed by taxpayers. Some 43 billion euros ($59.15 billion) of that is considered uncollectable and will be archived in a special folder to be written off in 10 years’ time.
According to Finance Ministry data covering the period from the start of the year until October 31, taxpayers and firms entered special payment programs for debts adding up to 1.5 billion euros ($2.06 billon).
Tax collection in the first 10 months of the year came in 191 million euros ($262.76 million) short of the target, while Value-Added Tax (VAT) revenues beat the target by 2.3 percent in the same period even though the rate for restaurants was reduced beginning in the summer from 23 to 13 percent, which the government wants to continue.
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