New payment plan for debts
The Finance Ministry is drawing up plans for a new tax debt payment scheme aimed at taxpayers who have been unable to benefit from the extrajudicial mechanism.
Sources say that salary workers, pensioners, unemployed people, professionals with invoice books (“blokakia”) and enterprises that have closed their books will be able to pay their dues in up to 120 installments according to the plan.
Businesses that are sustainable but could not enter the extrajudicial mechanism because they did not fulfill the necessary condition of producing at least one year of profits will also qualify.
According to a senior ministry official, the size of each tranche has not yet been decided, although taxpayers should be able to enter the new scheme by the end of the year. In any case, the same official acknowledged, applicants need to pay all of this year’s obligations or at least settle them by the time they enter the scheme, which will concern debts created up to the end of 2017.
The plan will include strict income and property criteria, which should persuade the country’s creditors to approve the measure. What the government must ensure, though, is that debtors who regularly use settlement plans to secure tax clearance are not allowed to benefit from the scheme.
