While the Greek tax system occupies a dominant position in the pre-election agenda in recent days, the numbers and official data of the tax declarations highlight the Greek “peculiarities”: On paper, Greece does not have rich people.

Only 27,000 citizens declare an individual income of more than 100,000 euros, while four out of ten appear to live on 5,000 euros a year.

Fewer than 15,000 property owners have personal real estate worth more than one million euros, while less than 70,000 depositors have large deposits in banks – more than 100,000 euros each.

Poor business…

Of the total of approximately 300,000 legal entities operating in the country, only 10,000 declare taxable profits of more than €150,000, meaning that even fewer (given that corporate income tax and withholding tax must be deducted) are able to distribute dividends over 100,000 euros.

On the contrary, 235,000 legal entities out of a total of approximately 300,000 – i.e. approximately 8 out of 10 companies – have either losses or profits smaller than what the minimum wage worker (10,000 euros per year) now earns.

What does all this evidence show? The crucial thing in Greece is to reveal and properly record incomes, assets and profits, so that the tax policy can be designed with greater fairness.

In the field of real estatetwo out of three owners (over 4.7 million people) have individual assets that do not exceed €60,000, while around 650,000 owners in addition do not even cross the €80,000 barrier.

About three out of four have charges of a few tens or a few hundred euros.

Around 1.7 million owners pay up to €100, around 3.2 million pay between €101 and €500 and 1.4 million between €501 and €5,000.

About 35,000 natural persons pay from 5,000 euros and above, while the “millionaire” owners who pay more than 500,000 euros each do not even exceed 500. In Greece, those with individual assets of more than one million euros are only 15,000 people.

Less than 70,000 depositors have large bank deposits of over 100,000 euros each.

As regards natural persons, the difficulty in defining the so-called “middle class” in Greece has to do with the huge number of natural persons who declare extremely low earnings.

If one divides the taxpayers into “quartiles” (this is the practice followed by ELSTAT for the survey of family budgets) one will come to the conclusion that the “middle” 50% (that is, excluding those who belong to the “poorest” 25% and those who belong in the highest 25%) will also include those with an individual income even below 6,000-7,000 euros per year (simply because 4 out of 10 show annual incomes below 5,000 euros).