Settlement plans utilized by very few state debtors
A staggering 96.5 percent of state debtors have not entered any sort of debt settlement or payment plan due to their inability to respond to the tax authorities’ 12-tranche repayment offer.
According to figures for 2018 from the Independent Authority for Public Revenue, the total amount of overdue arrears to the state came to 104.365 billion euros, of which just 3.69 billion was in some form of a settlement. The IAPR’s analysts estimate that no more than 8.1 percent of the amount due – 8.4 billion euros – can actually be collected.
The data also showed that the tax authorities performed 816,721 confiscations last year, which netted them 5.5 billion euros, while there was also a 97 percent increase year-on-year in the underwriting of debtors’ properties, to 8,350 from 4,222 in 2017.
Although the number of bank accounts seized was lower than in 2017, takings increased by 8 percent; this was thanks to the tax authorities using the bank account register so as to avoid the empty accounts.
