Task Force Urges Greece to Improve Tax Collection
By JAMES KANTER
NYT
BRUSSELS — Greece is owed billions in unpaid taxes, but the prospects for collection are “very low” because the authorities have not yet simplified the system nor taken measures to curb tax evasion, the European Commission said Thursday.
There is a backlog of 165,000 pending tax cases, some more than a decade old, representing about half of the total arrears of 60 billion euros ($81 billion), according to a report by the task force charged by the commission with aiding economic recovery in Greece.
About 6 billion to 8 billion euros of that is “considered collectible,” the report said, and provides “scope for possible ‘quick wins’ ”— though Greece still needs to act quickly to modernize its tax system, it added.
The debt crisis that has put the future of the euro in question and toppled leaders in Italy and Greece began about two years ago in Greece, where tax avoidance has long been widespread and where the authorities lied for years about the true state of the country’s finances.
(More here.)
NYT
BRUSSELS — Greece is owed billions in unpaid taxes, but the prospects for collection are “very low” because the authorities have not yet simplified the system nor taken measures to curb tax evasion, the European Commission said Thursday.
There is a backlog of 165,000 pending tax cases, some more than a decade old, representing about half of the total arrears of 60 billion euros ($81 billion), according to a report by the task force charged by the commission with aiding economic recovery in Greece.
About 6 billion to 8 billion euros of that is “considered collectible,” the report said, and provides “scope for possible ‘quick wins’ ”— though Greece still needs to act quickly to modernize its tax system, it added.
The debt crisis that has put the future of the euro in question and toppled leaders in Italy and Greece began about two years ago in Greece, where tax avoidance has long been widespread and where the authorities lied for years about the true state of the country’s finances.
(More here.)
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