Wednesday, February 25, 2015

The Anti-Tax Mentality of the Greeks

WSJ explains:
Of all the challenges Greece has faced in recent years, prodding its citizens to pay their taxes has been one of the most difficult.

At the end of 2014, Greeks owed their government about €76 billion ($86 billion) in unpaid taxes accrued over decades; the government says only €9 billion of that can be recovered, with most of the rest lost to insolvency.

Billions more in taxes are owed on never-reported revenue from Greece’s vast underground economy, which was estimated before the crisis to equal more than a quarter of the country’s gross domestic product.

The International Monetary Fund and Greece’s other creditors have argued for years that the country’s debt crisis could be largely resolved if the government just cracked down on tax evasion. Tax debts in Greece equal about 90% of annual tax revenue, the highest shortfall among industrialized nations, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Greece’s new government, scrambling to secure another tranche of short-term funding, agreed on Tuesday to make tax collection a top priority on a long list of measures. Yet previous governments have made similar promises, only to fall short.

Tax rates in Greece are broadly in line with those elsewhere in Europe. But Greeks have a widespread aversion to paying what they owe the state, an attitude often blamed on a combination of cultural and historical forces. During the country’s centurieslong occupation by the Ottomans, avoiding taxes was a sign of patriotism. Today, that distrust is focused on the government, which many Greeks see as corrupt, inefficient and unreliable.

“Greeks consider taxes as theft,” said Aristides Hatzis, an associate professor of law and economics at the University of Athens. “Normally taxes are considered the price you have to pay for a just state, but this is not accepted by the Greek mentality.”

10 comments:

  1. Too bad they don't have an IRS there.

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  2. Greeks on the whole sound pretty damn smart to me when it comes to gov't, if I might be so bold to generalize.

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    1. well, they apparently want government to provide them with opportunity and a welfare state, they just don't want to have to pay for it. Sure, they hit some nails on the head. Tax is theft, for instance. But running up deficits and refusing to pay the bills is a big miss.

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    2. "But running up deficits and refusing to pay the bills is a big miss."

      Maybe it's not them, but their gov't.

      I can think of another country or two where the citizens aren't really in control even though there's elections. Of course, there is always a welfare class ready to cast their vote for the one that promises them the most looted goods, but that's a quasi different issue because we haven't quantified what % of the voting population is 'them'.

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  3. Re: Government as "corrupt, inefficient and unreliable.

    Wait... are we talking about Greece or the US?

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    Replies
    1. Both and all governments by definition.

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  4. “Greeks consider taxes as theft,” said Aristides Hatzis, an associate professor of law and economics at the University of Athens."

    Then why do the idiot Greek people keep voting in statist maggots?

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    1. Free lunch, perhaps? Why don't they all mass emigrate to the richer EU countries instead?

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    2. Government ensures the free rider problem. It doesn't alleviate it.

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  5. "Then why do the idiot Greek people keep voting in statist maggots?"

    What if elections are rigged like here in the US?

    From what I understand, Italians are also noted for their tax
    Avoidance/evasion.

    I guess if I have to live under a state, a southern European one would have the most potential
    relative to the more efficient anglo tyranny of the UK or US.

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