Topic: Greeks face heavy fines if they don't spend 30% of their income electronically (Read 654 times)

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I think it is not difficult for the government to make tax collection rules automatically through bank accounts. they will make rules and then announce to people and then the rules will be applied. maybe some residents will reject this rule. but did you know the character of government is always authoritarian. they will always try to take tax from their citizens. because taxes are the country's biggest income. the government in my country also issued regulations like that they force their citizens to pay taxes automatically. that policy even though I disagree I can't do anything because I'm just an ordinary person.

It will not encourage any government to legalize crypto but they want to have complete control over the transactions made by their citizens.

Is it even allowed to automatically withdraw the tax directly from the account without a consent, it is against the freedom of an individual and i am not sure that will happen because Greece is a democratic republic and if a government does anything then they will be removed from power in the next election if there is a favorable candidate or a party that caters to the needs of the common citizen.

And this is why those kind of laws are useless

Maybe the best course would have been having some sort of checks time to time on every business instead of making an absurd new law for it? If you leave it to people to report their income that doesn't mean that 30% of it electronic will change anything, they will make 1000 dollars in profit and say it was 100 dollars and they will spend 30 dollars of it online and you have about 3% of it going to online instead of 30% that way.

I feel like that is not something we can recover ourselves that easily but also governments can't allow people to just report themselves without proper checking. If Greece had a bit more money saved for something like IRS in america they could have actually made that money back easily thanks to people finding criminals evading taxes.

The heck!
This is something new for a country.

-Wikipedia

Once they were admitted in to the EU, another layer of taxation was implemented on the residents living in these countries.

I have also read the news that several countries have also issued policies to limit and reduce the use of fiat money. and maybe this policy will encourage the government to also legalize cryptocurency as an alternative means of payment.

and I agree with the opinion that maybe the Greek government issued the policy to be able to take tax automatically from the accounts of its citizens so that no one will be in arrears to pay taxes.

Let me see.
National tax, Municipal tax, Church tax, 27% tax on dividends, 25% VAT, (in Greece is 24%), tax on land on buildings...you would think the black market is also rampant here. Oh, forgot to add, 180% tax on cars? 180%!!!
Yet, everyone is saying how Denmark is such a nice country to live in.

If the government in Greece would spend the money the same way it would be a different story.

Politics of Germany. Germany is a democratic, federal parliamentary republic, where federal legislative power is vested in the Bundestag (the parliament of Germany) and the Bundesrat (the representative body of the Länder, Germany's regional states).

I have also read the news that several countries have also issued policies to limit and reduce the use of fiat money. and maybe this policy will encourage the government to also legalize cryptocurency as an alternative means of payment.
and I agree with the opinion that maybe the Greek government issued the policy to be able to take tax automatically from the accounts of its citizens so that no one will be in arrears to pay taxes.

So the Greeks are just genetically predisposed to tax evasion?

If tax rates like that are possible, it's no wonder 1/4 of the GDP is black market. Up to 45% income tax, up to 10% "solidarity" tax, 16% employee payroll tax, not to mention VAT, real property tax, etc.
As an American, I feel fleeced by the IRS but there is no comparison to Greece. I would dodge taxes too if I lived there.

Rampant is not really accurate. It's more like a national sport or some sort of religious movement.
Greeks have been among the first ones to go bankrupt in human history, they will be probably the last.
They hate the taxman but at the same time they love getting freebies, they pay zero in taxes but everybody was enjoying benefits from the government, just imagine the term "14th wage". Yeah, they were getting 14th wages a year!

I've been to Greece a couple of times, even before the euro and the crisis, receipts were nonexistent, you would get your restaurant bill on a piece of paper handwritten, asking to pay with a card, the machine is broken, asking for a receipt, the machine is broken.

Yeah, the measure is not right, its nor normal but neither is that country.
Either way, nothing is going to save them, the whole country and system is flawed from birth.

Few problems are more ingrained, or harder to combat, than the shadow economy, which appears to be growing again as new austerity measures compel once law-abiding Greeks to go off the books. Greece’s black market is estimated at 20 to 25 percent of the gross domestic product, as more people have stopped reporting their income to avoid paying taxes that, by some estimates, have risen to 70 percent of an individual’s gross income.

“The heart of the matter for an ever-rising number of citizens and businesses is that they simply do not have the financial resources anymore to meet their rising tax obligations,” said Jens Bastian, an economist and a member of a team of European Union specialists that helped supervise the country’s earlier bailouts.

Short on alternatives, he said, “many are falling back into the gray economy.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/18/world/europe/greece-bailout-black-market.html

Is this a joke? How can the government force something like this, when the people are already paying the income tax over their salaries? The tax rates in Greece remains one of the highest in the world, and now the government want to take away a part of the remainder as well. This will never be implemented successfully, and people will find loopholes to get around the system.

I wonder how forcing them to spend 30% of their income electronically will avoid tax evasion when they can also fake their real income in the first place.

Gotta love that, the government forcing people who don't use the internet to spend their money electronically, which usually includes spending it on the internet.  This reminds me of China's push to go cashless, which would put their elderly population in something of a bind.

I don't know about Greece's "rampant tax evasion" problem, but I suspect that's just an excuse for their government to restrict how Greeks spend their own money, much like how the US has used the war on terror to spy on everyone.

Bitcoin is the currency for the people, it has proven to be perfect in Venezuela.

The tax rates in Greece remains one of the highest in the world, and now the government want to take away a part of the remainder as well. T

I don’t see anything good in this.

It is still possible for them to implement such policy as a preparation for a cashless system. And there's nothing wrong about it, in fact, it would help cut the needed natural resources used in cash production. However, it does sacrifice some financial freedom (because cash is harder to trace than digital means of transaction). And not all people are capable of transacting digitally.

This just begs to become another use case for Bitcoin, and not because it's electronic but because it's electronic cash - it can be used to avoid taxes just like cash

Is this a joke? How can the government force something like this, when the people are already paying the income tax over their salaries? The tax rates in Greece remains one of the highest in the world, and now the government want to take away a part of the remainder as well. This will never be implemented successfully, and people will find loopholes to get around the system.

Greece has imposed fines for citizens that fail to spend 30% of their income electronically.

They claim this policy is implemented to cut down on tax evasion, for which greece is notorious for. We've witnessed similar anti tax evasion strategies unrolled in india. There is a question mark as to whether these measures are imposed with the intent to cut tax evasion, or whether they are anti cash policies utilized in an effort to further a cashless society paradigm.

even though it is a trend of European countries, but it still makes a mystery, why do they have to spend 30% of their total income? Isn't that a person's own privacy, I think the rules are a bit silly, if only paying taxes I think there is no problem

I am speechless to see these kind of restrictions and dictatorship kind of rules in the name of helping the nation to catch tax evaders is bullshit, happy that we are not facing these situation and hopefully we will not be forced to do everything digitally as the trend is coming that the government is forcing people to do all the transactions digitally while some of the fools thing that the government is doing it to help the decentralized market and after seeing all these comments i tend to crack up because of the naivety everyone has.

Greece has imposed fines for citizens that fail to spend 30% of their income electronically.

even though it is a trend of European countries, but it still makes a mystery, why do they have to spend 30% of their total income? Isn't that a person's own privacy, I think the rules are a bit silly, if only paying taxes I think there is no problem

This seems to be a trend in Europe with other countries making similar requirements. This is a trend that’s probably good for cryptocurrencies.

Is this a joke? How can the government force something like this, when the people are already paying the income tax over their salaries? The tax rates in Greece remains one of the highest in the world, and now the government want to take away a part of the remainder as well. This will never be implemented successfully, and people will find loopholes to get around the system.

In 2007, before the crisis struck, the nation’s debt to GDP ratio was 103.7%. This could be considered high. However, after the creditor haircut, the IMF assistance, and the ECB loans, Greece’s debt to GDP ratio reached 178.6%, having reached 180.8% in 2016. Now, the majority of Greece’s national debt is owed to the IMF, the ECB, and various EU schemes. One condition of these loan contracts was that the Greek government will not be allowed to demand a haircut from those creditors. The Greek bailout didn’t offer the country a way out of its debt, which, in terms of a percentage of GDP is now the second highest in the world after Japan.

Era of cash are gone. More and more govs want to control and see every transaction

Is this a joke? How can the government force something like this, when the people are already paying the income tax over their salaries? The tax rates in Greece remains one of the highest in the world, and now the government want to take away a part of the remainder as well. This will never be implemented successfully, and people will find loopholes to get around the system.

The Italian Minister Council continues to wage its war on cash, with the latest ratification lowering the maximum allowed amount for cash payments. This could lead to the rise of Bitcoin in the country.
from: https://beincrypto.com/bitcoin-viability-strengthened-by-new-cash-limits-in-italy/?utm_campaign=amba&utm_medium=social&utm_source=bitcointalk&utm_content=jc

There is a question mark as to whether these measures are imposed with the intent to cut tax evasion, or whether they are anti cash policies utilized in an effort to further a cashless society paradigm.

There's a second relevent angle where tax cuts are utilized in an effort to bolster tax revenues, which is counter intuitive in regard to how many view tax policies. Some believe tax cuts can only result in decreased tax revenues, which is not necessarily the case due to it having the potential to cut tax evasion

Greeks will be hit with a hefty fine if they do not spend almost a third of their income electronically in an unprecedented bid by the new government to stamp out rampant tax evasion.

The government expects to raise more than €500 million ($808 million) every year from the initiative that will force Greeks to spend 30 per cent of their income electronically, Alex Patelis, the prime minister's chief economic adviser, revealed.

Individuals that fail to meet the target will be hit with a 22 per cent fine on the shortfall. Therefore, if an individual spends just 20 per cent of their income through electronic means, they would face a 22 per cent tax on the remaining 10 per cent bar some exclusions.

The scheme is a radical attempt to cast some light on Greece's huge shadow economy, the world's largest, and is part of new prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis's sweeping overhaul to revive growth.

"This is a big initiative next year that will either raise more revenue because [people] will pay the penalty or more likely because of the [higher] VAT receipts," Mr Patelis told The Telegraph.

The revenue predicted is likely to be at the "lower end" of estimates and the country's banks will help impose the measures by reporting spending to the authorities.

If a Greek earned €1,000 per month and only paid 15 per cent of their income electronically, they would pay a fine of around €400 every year, for example. The government is confident it will not drive more workers into the country's booming shadow economy and tempt them to understate their earnings, a key problem in Greece.

Greeks can use debit cards, credit cards, bank transfers and ecommerce for the electronic transactions, which includes rent.

But many workers are paid their wages in cash, which they then use to pay their rent and bills. Greece also has one of the lowest internet usage rates in the EU at 72 per cent. This suggests that some in the country could struggle to meet the 30 per cent target.

Southern Europe, particularly Greece, have booming shadow economies. A study by the Institute for Applied Economic Research in 2017 found that Greece had the largest in the world, being equivalent to 22 per cent of gross domestic product.

Individuals and businesses are enticed to under report earnings and avoid taxation due to high rates and cumbersome bureaucracy.

Tax evasion has been labelled a "Greek national sport" and it was estimated in 2016 to cost the country's coffers up to €16 billion every year, largely through fraud on VAT or income tax.

However, Mr Mitsotakis' government is cutting the tax burden of workers and businesses in an attempt to shock the Greek economy back into life.

Greece has returned to growth but its economy remains sluggish with output still a quarter below pre financial crisis levels.

https://www.smh.com.au/business/markets/greeks-set-to-face-heavy-fines-if-they-don-t-spend-30-per-cent-of-their-income-electronically-20191209-p53i14.html

Individuals and businesses are enticed to under report earnings and avoid taxation due to high rates and cumbersome bureaucracy.

However, Mr Mitsotakis' government is cutting the tax burden of workers and businesses in an attempt to shock the Greek economy back into life.