Thousands of angry Greeks march against austerity

[The Brain]

Greece hasn't contributed to humanity since it was analized by Alexander. Good riddance.

[Palisadoes]

Waste is common in most countries. Want me to dug obscure examples of the same thing in the US? There are many of them...

Well of course, but clearly not on the same scale as Greece (i.e. leading to bankruptcy).

Actually, this is quite common in Southern Europe: Portugal and Spain also have 14 months, Italy and France have 13 months, Belgium too, Germany and Holland have similar season-linked payments.

Just because Americans and Brits like to be robbed blind by their bosses doesn't mean everyone else should do it.

It's not getting 'robbed', it's getting paid for work you've actually done.

ALSO, take note that the ordinary citizen earns very little. Counting with those extra wages, your average greek lives with the fabulous wage of about 18K per year [in Portugal is 10K per year], though with prices far superior of those in the US.

Take the extra pay away from people, and many will be facing dire financial problems - the extras were meant to allow people to actually go on vacation, or to buy things for the kids during Christmas. Without those, they cannot do so.

(in fact, most people depend on those just to balance their budgets; they don't go on vacation even with their vacation bonus)

Vacations aren't a necessity, they're a luxury. The government was good-willed in its intentions to give ordinary people a break. However, it's just not sustainable, and should've been stamped out ages ago.

[Zanza]

ATHENS — In the wealthy, northern suburbs of this city, where summer temperatures often hit the high 90s, just 324 residents checked the box on their tax returns admitting that they owned pools.

Athenians declared taxes at a local office. Greek's shadow economy represents 20 to 30 percent of its G.D.P.

So tax investigators studied satellite photos of the area — a sprawling collection of expensive villas tucked behind tall gates — and came back with a decidedly different number: 16,974 pools.

That kind of wholesale lying about assets, and other eye-popping cases that are surfacing in the news media here, points to the staggering breadth of tax dodging that has long been a way of life here.

Such evasion has played a significant role in Greece's debt crisis, and as the country struggles to get its financial house in order, it is going after tax cheats as never before.

Various studies, including one by the Federation of Greek Industries last year, have estimated that the government may be losing as much as $30 billion a year to tax evasion — a figure that would have gone a long way to solving its debt problems.

"We need to grow up," said Ioannis Plakopoulos, who like all owners of newspaper stands will have to give receipts and start using a cash register under the new tax laws passed last month. "We need to learn not to cheat or to let others cheat."

On the eve of an International Monetary Fund bailout deal that is sure to call for deep sacrifices here, including harsh austerity measures, layoffs and steep tax increases, many Greeks say they feel chastened by the financial crisis that has pushed the country to the edge of bankruptcy.

But even so, changing things will not be easy. Experts point out that ducking taxes is part of a broader culture of bribery and corruption that is deeply entrenched.

Mr. Plakopoulos, who supports most of the government's new efforts, admits that he and his friends used to chuckle over the best ways to avoid taxes.

To get more attentive care in the country's national health system, Greeks routinely pay doctors cash on the side, a practice known as "fakelaki," Greek for little envelope. And bribing government officials to grease the wheels of bureaucracy is so standard that people know the rates. They say, for instance, that 300 euros, about $400, will get you an emission inspection sticker.

Some of the most aggressive tax evaders, experts say, are the self-employed, a huge pool of people in this country of small businesses. It includes not just taxi drivers, restaurant owners and electricians, but engineers, architects, lawyers and doctors.

The cheating is often quite bold. When tax authorities recently surveyed the returns of 150 doctors with offices in the trendy Athens neighborhood of Kolonaki, where Prada and Chanel stores can be found, more than half had claimed an income of less than $40,000. Thirty-four of them claimed less than $13,300, a figure that exempted them from paying any taxes at all.

Such incomes defy belief, said Ilias Plaskovitis, the general secretary of the Finance Ministry, who has been in charge of revamping the country's tax laws. "You need more than that to pay your rent in that neighborhood," he said.

He said there were only a few thousand citizens in this country of 11 million who last year declared an income of more than $132,000. Yet signs of wealth abound.

"There are many people with a house, with a cottage in the country, with two cars and maybe a small boat who claim they are earning 12,000 euros a year," Mr. Plaskovitis said, which is about $15,900. "You cannot heat this house or buy the gas for the car with that kind of income."

The Greek government has set a goal for itself of collecting at least $1.6 billion more than last year — a modest goal, Mr. Plaskovitis believes. But European Union officials were so skeptical, Mr. Plaskovitis said, they would not even allow the figure to be included in the budget forecast used in negotiations over the bailout package.

"They said, 'Yes, yes, we have heard that before, but it never happens,' " he said.

Over the past decade, Greece actually lost ground in collecting taxes, even as the economy was booming. A 2008 European Union report on Greece tax shortfalls found that between 2000 and 2007, the country's average growth in nominal gross domestic product was 8.25 percent. Its taxes grew at just 7 percent.

How Greece ended up with this state of affairs is a matter of debate here. Some attribute it to Greece's long history under Turkish occupation, when Greeks got used to seeing the government as an enemy. Others point out that, classical history aside, Greece is actually a relatively young democracy.

Whatever the reason, Kostas Bakouris, the president of the Greek arm of the anticorruption organization Transparency International, said that Greeks were constantly facing the lure of petty corruption. "If they go to the mechanic, it is one price without a receipt and quite a bit more with it," Mr. Bakouris said.

He said his own sister had recently told him that she was uncomfortable asking her doctor for a receipt. "I said that's crazy," he said. "But still, that feeling is out there."

Various studies have concluded that Greece's shadow economy represented 20 to 30 percent of its gross domestic product. Friedrich Schneider, the chairman of the economics department at Johannes Kepler University of Linz, studies Europe's shadow economies; he said that Greece's was at 25 percent last year and estimated that it would rise to 25.2 percent in 2010. For comparison, the United States' was put at 7.8 percent.

The Finance Ministry believes that the new tax laws, which also increased the weight on income and value-added taxes, have laid the legal groundwork for better enforcement. In the past, the tax code gave many categories of workers special status. Entire professions were allowed to file a set income. For instance, newsstand owners could simply claim that they earned an income of 12,000 euros (about $15,900) and no questions were asked.

Now, most of these exceptions have been eliminated and the tax code has been simplified. It also offers various incentives to make people collect receipts — an important step, officials say, in shrinking the off-the-books economy.

In addition, the tax department is being reorganized so that regional offices will have far less autonomy.

Mr. Plaskovitis said that tax collectors had already begun using technology to crosscheck claims and that they had taken steps like asking luxury car dealerships for list of their clients. A lot of Greeks, he said, listed luxury cars as company cars, a practice that would be challenged in the future. "We do not believe you need a Porsche to sell Coca-Cola," he said.

Soon, Mr. Plaskovitis said, people will see results. "In the coming weeks," he said, "we are going to be closing down companies, restaurants and doctors' offices because they have not paid taxes."

But how fast progress will come is an open question. The changes have provoked protests and deep resentment in some circles. For instance, the president of the union for doctors who work in state hospitals, Stathis Tsoukalos, 60, calls the loss of a special tax status for his doctors wrongheaded and unfair. He contended that the special low tax rate was given to make up for the fact that doctors received very low pay.

Speaking of the doctors in the Kolonaki neighborhood who claimed small incomes, he said, they may have just opened their practices or bought real estate there with help from their parents.

Whether the country's tax collectors are up to the task is also unclear. Many Greeks say tax collectors have a reputation for being among the easiest officials to bribe. Some say tax troubles are usually solved in a three way split: You pay a third of what you owe to the government, a third to the collector and a third remains in your pocket.

Froso Stavraki, who has been a tax collector for 27 years and is now a high-ranking official in the union, readily concedes that there is some corruption in the ranks. But she contends that the politicians never wanted toughness.

"The orders from above were to do everyday tax processing," she said. "We were busy going over forms, checking on those who pay taxes, not those who didn't."

Reading that it sounds like the problem in Greece is not the spending side, but the revenue side. They need more efficient tax enforcement.
A personal anecdote I know is how a German mother of two never got a dime from the Greek father of her children despite that father having a nice villa and a yacht at the Mediterranean coast where the children visited every year for a couple of weeks. But according to Greek authorities he didn't have any money so they could not pay child support.

[jimmy olsen]

Greece agrees to terms, but will it be enough?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/03/business/global/03drachma.html?hp

[Ed Anger]

ATHENS — In the wealthy, northern suburbs of this city, where summer temperatures often hit the high 90s, just 324 residents checked the box on their tax returns admitting that they owned pools.

So there is a fucking pool tax?

[grumbler]

ATHENS — In the wealthy, northern suburbs of this city, where summer temperatures often hit the high 90s, just 324 residents checked the box on their tax returns admitting that they owned pools.

So there is a fucking pool tax?

I think it is for any pool.

[Ed Anger]

ATHENS — In the wealthy, northern suburbs of this city, where summer temperatures often hit the high 90s, just 324 residents checked the box on their tax returns admitting that they owned pools.

So there is a fucking pool tax?

I think it is for any pool.

[Admiral Yi]

Just because Americans and Brits like to be robbed blind by their bosses doesn't mean everyone else should do it.

Of course not.  Countries are free to pay their employees as much as they want.  But we're talking about Greece, which can't borrow any more money to pay its employees as much they want.

[Sheilbh]

Reading that it sounds like the problem in Greece is not the spending side, but the revenue side. They need more efficient tax enforcement.

I think it's a bit of both.  But in the British hyperventilation ("ARE WE DOOMED?") one of the points everyone makes about why we're not like Greece is that we have a tax collection system that actually works.

[Sheilbh]

I think you lack any understanding of what the tea party types seem to be protesting for.  They want the types of austerity measures the Greeks are protesting against.  They seem to me to be diametrically opposite on views and goals.

I can't think of any austerity or budget balancing measures the tea partiers have seemed to support.  I mean admittedly they're a negative movement (like the Greeks) protesting against rather than for something, so that's not necessarily going to happen anyway.  But I can't think of any indication that they want to, for example, cut the big US government programs like social security, medicare or defence, or that they want to raise taxes.

[garbon]

I can't think of any austerity or budget balancing measures the tea partiers have seemed to support.  I mean admittedly they're a negative movement (like the Greeks) protesting against rather than for something, so that's not necessarily going to happen anyway.  But I can't think of any indication that they want to, for example, cut the big US government programs like social security, medicare or defence, or that they want to raise taxes.

I can think of one. Let's not have new bills every so often that cost billions of dollars.

[grumbler]

I can't think of any austerity or budget balancing measures the tea partiers have seemed to support. 

Not surprising.  They are pretty marginal here, so there is no reason to think that a Brit would remember their deficit-cutting proposals.

I mean admittedly they're a negative movement (like the Greeks) protesting against rather than for something, so that's not necessarily going to happen anyway.

   No, movements like this (even the Greek protests) are demonstrating against things they dislike and in favor of things they like.  They aren't truly negative, like the protest JMS organized in (I think) the 97 Blackpool SF Convention, where he had people (bored because they were standing around outside as a result of a fire alarm going off) chanting (Joe: )"Whadda we want?" (crowd:) "We don't know!" (Joe: )"Whenda we wannit?" (crowd:) "Now!"

Protests are by their nature more negative than positive in their message:  they are, after all, called "protests!" 

But I can't think of any indication that they want to, for example, cut the big US government programs like social security, medicare or defence, or that they want to raise taxes.

There is no reason why their spending cut "proposals" should be known across the pond, so I am not surprised you have missed what indications there are. 

However, while you may not have heard their plans (and, again, no reason why you should, or should remember them if you did happen to hear them), the Tea party types are objecting to the ongoing deficits and the rise in government spending, not the reverse (which is what the Greeks are protesting).  They almost certainly don't agree on the details like eliminating the Education department to save money (which is why there would be no reason for someone like you to even know about these kinds of "policies"), but they are agreed that the federal government taxes and spends too much.  The TEA in "tea party" stands for "Taxed Enough Already"

[Baron von Schtinkenbutt]

I can't think of any austerity or budget balancing measures the tea partiers have seemed to support.  I mean admittedly they're a negative movement (like the Greeks) protesting against rather than for something, so that's not necessarily going to happen anyway.  But I can't think of any indication that they want to, for example, cut the big US government programs like social security, medicare or defence, or that they want to raise taxes.

With regards to the mainstream Republicans who have hijacked the movement, I agree.  With regards to the Libertarians and libertarian Republicans who started it, that isn't true.  The latter group does want to roll back existing programs, particularly Medicare, Social Security, and the Department of Education.

[Sheilbh]

Not surprising.  They are pretty marginal here, so there is no reason to think that a Brit would remember their deficit-cutting proposals.

Well show me them.  If they're serious then I'll admit that I got them wrong on this.

Protests are by their nature more negative than positive in their message:  they are, after all, called "protests!" 

This is generally true but there can be protests for things too.  There were some in favour of healthcare, most protests by women's rights and civil rights groups are for things, protests in this country by the Countryside Alliance and their opponents on fox hunting are for things.  They're all trying to advance an argument rather that protesting against one - as is the case with the tea parties, the Greeks, the anti-war movement and other examples.

However, while you may not have heard their plans (and, again, no reason why you should, or should remember them if you did happen to hear them), the Tea party types are objecting to the ongoing deficits and the rise in government spending, not the reverse (which is what the Greeks are protesting).  They almost certainly don't agree on the details like eliminating the Education department to save money (which is why there would be no reason for someone like you to even know about these kinds of "policies"), but they are agreed that the federal government taxes and spends too much.  The TEA in "tea party" stands for "Taxed Enough Already"

As I say I'd be very interested to read them.

My impression is that, like the Greeks, they're disconnected from reality on the same point: we don't have to pay.  The Greeks have built up debt through unsustainable policies but aren't willing to take the necessary pain.  In the US you've built a welfare state, you've built the most expensive military in the world and at some point you'll either have to pay for it (tax rises which the tea parties oppose) or dismantle it (which, to the best of my knowledge, the tea parties don't support).

Incidentally abolishing the Department of Education - which I've no problem with - assuming that money isn't then reinvested into education would make really very little difference in terms of the deficit.  It would be the equivalent of our National Insurance rise debate.

[garbon]

With regards to the mainstream Republicans who have hijacked the movement, I agree.  With regards to the Libertarians and libertarian Republicans who started it, that isn't true.  The latter group does want to roll back existing programs, particularly Medicare, Social Security, and the Department of Education.

I like how your phrasing seems to support the idea that the latter crackheads are sensible with their policy aims.