Firms forced to emigrate, shut or break rules
In today’s adverse business environment, the excessive taxation of corporate profits favors the illegal economy and pushes organized enterprises and their workers out of the market, according to the weekly bulletin of the Hellenic Federation of Enterprises (SEV).
The bulletin stresses that the earnings and dividends of enterprises in Greece are now taxed so heavily that, including the special levy, they have to part with more than 50 percent. The country also taxes workers, especially senior executives, at rates similar to those in countries such as Belgium, Italy and France, and above those in Scandinavian countries.
SEV argues that when taxation reaches a level that does not allow for profits, large and organized enterprises are forced either to shut down or to move abroad, or even to shrink to a size that would allow them to operate in the illegal economy.
“Therefore the market is increasingly trapped in entrepreneurship of limited prospects that survives in quasi-legitimacy and can offer neither growth nor jobs,” it notes.
