| generic-user-1 said: the EU should help alot more, building up the taxation infrastructure, bombarding swiss if they dont corporate with greece, making usefull demands(like taxation for the shipping industrie), etc. i dont think greece would say no to usefull demands. |
Germany offered to send 160 tax inspectors to Greece, to help the Greek government fix their tax collection systems, but the Greek government rejected their help. (Source)
And then there's the case of Greece's former Secretary for Public Revenue, who quit after receiving death threats while trying to improve the state's tax collection systems. (Source)
There's an attitude in Greece that avoiding taxes is somehow honourable or brave, when really it's the cause behind most of the country's problems. Greece has been running budget deficits for 40+ years. The reason that the troika have looked for spending cuts, as opposed to tax increases, is because their is a belief among the troika members (which is an entirely reasonable belief) that any measures agreed on for any deals that involve increases in taxes won't actually happen. Successive Greek governments have said they will improve tax collection methods, reduce tax avoidance, boost tax receipts etc. And they haven't. The previous Greek government got a small primary surplus last year and saw a small (but signficant, considering what went before) reduction in unemployment figures. And how did the Greek people respond? They voted in the loonies and stopped paying their taxes.
Greek tax receipts were €900m (a staggering 24%) under target in May this year. (Source) Basically, if tax receipts this year had reached the levels expected, the Greek government would have been able to pay the €1.6 billion to the IMF in June, as well as the upcoming €3.5 billion to the ECB (July 20th), without having to secure extra funding first.
At this point, any more support Europe offers should be conditional on reforms occurring first. If more money is advanced to Greece with promises of "we'll fix this" and "we'll fix that", nothing will change. The Greek government needs to get it house in order, then be rewarded for that (e.g. achieve primary surplus of 1% this year, get x amount of debt written off. Achieve primary surplus of 2% in 2016, get y amount of debt written off).
