Gov't focuses on combating large-scale tax evasion
In a television interview, Alexiadis said there were currently around 25,000 tax evasion cases with an estimated average tax of 600,000 euros each, of which less than 1,500 have been inspected.
"We do not want to focus mainly on small and medium-sized tax evasion. We move towards copying the operation of European tax agencies which focus mainly on large-scale tax evasion," Alexiadis said.
The Greek minister noted that action will be taken next week to protect and strengthen tax inspection bodies and added that action will be taken to extend the time for inspecting a so-called "Lagarde list". "We will inspect all large tax-evasion cases," he said, while commenting on changes in a 100-installment scheme to repay overdue tax debt, he noted that conditions will be stricter for remaining in the scheme. Alexiadis said that a special property tax for 2015 will be unchanged from 2014, "with changes only in some very small categories", but noted that the target for next year was to achieve revenues of 2.65 billion euros and to change real estate asset values by September 2016. He said that the ministry was examining plans to impose a property tax on real estate assets owned by Greek citizens abroad, copying a similar scheme introduced in Italy.
The ministry also drafts a new legislation offering incentives for a voluntary revealing of capital, but keeping all legal procedures in cases of smuggling. He said that another new draft bill will be a property register for all assets domestic and abroad.
Alexiadis said that the government has already found a list of equal measures to replace a 23 pct VAT on education and said that the Finance ministry wanted to introduce universally the use of plastic money and electronic money transactions in the country.
