Drastic steps to fight tax evasion
Tax dodging is far from exclusive to Greece. The existence of a tax system by definition gives rise to potential tax dodgers. But what distinguishes Greece from other countries in the West is the extent of tax evasion in the country. The fact that despite their endless war on tax evasion the country’s tax inspectors have managed to collect a mere 63.4 percent of the due revenues demonstrates that tax evasion is not necessarily a latent Greek weakness. The problem is rather that monitoring mechanisms do not work. That must have been the conclusion reached by the Internal Revenue Service, the American agency responsible for tax collection and tax law enforcement, whose officials visited Greece and who came up with specific proposals to tackle the problem. So whatever happened to those proposals? Have they been adopted? Are they being implemented, at least gradually? Greece does not have to reinvent the wheel in order to collect the concealed revenues. There is international know-how. In virtually all countries, tax evasion is a crime punished by the law. All countries have established electronic cross-checking of data. Why, then, has Greece failed to adopt similar measures? Tax dodging would not flourish if society didn’t tolerate it. The government must find ways to mobilize society against this modern form of theft. And turning every Greek consumer into a tax inspector is hardly a solution either. Extensive tax evasion deprives needy areas such as the defense sector, the welfare state and public infrastructure of considerable funds. The authorities must not be content to merely acknowledge the problem; they must be willing to take drastic measures to combat it without delay.
