No measures taken against tax dodging
The budget shortfall keeps increasing after the first five months of the year, as revenues by end-May lagged by 650 million euros and little to nothing is being done to combat tax evasion.
The problem of revenues is likely to grow considerably by the end of this month, given that the collection flow has not yet been restored due to delays in the submission and processing of income tax statements.
The State General Accounting Office has stopped almost all payouts to state suppliers, while the funding of social security funds and the rest of the public sector has been limited to the bare necessities so as to cover operating expenses only.
Although it has been almost five months since the change in government and state coffers are all but empty, the SYRIZA-led government has not taken a single measure to date in order to combat tax evasion. On the contrary, one of the first measures taken concerned the improvement to the regulation for the settlement of expired debts, while two weeks ago it was announced that undeclared incomes could be voluntarily revealed to the authorities without incurring any fines, penalties or judicial consequences.
Notably, the crackdown of tax dodging had been one of the central pledges of SYRIZA before the January election, but its fulfillment is yet to be seen.
