By Chrysostomos Tsoufis

The 56% of those who submit a tax return to the country (natural persons and companies) owe to the tax office. 7,169,698 the tax returns submitted this year, 4,001,794 the debtors according to the data of AADE until August (data made public by the Budget Office of the parliament as, unknown why, AADE has not yet made public the evolution of debts from May onwards).

4/10 of those who owe, approximately 1.6 million have already undergone some measure of forced collection (seizure, auction, etc.) while there are approximately 600,000 even those who are in immediate danger.

Whenever someone from the Ministry of Finance or generally from the government is confronted in the dialogue with these figures, they refer to the extrajudicial mechanism by supplementing how much the figures of debt arrangements have improved in its context, which is valid. What is NOT true is that the out-of-court mechanism is for everyone. Nor by reason as it concerns debts of more than 100,000 euro. And they have such debts 358.190 VAT number Not even 1 in 10 (8.9%). And since we are talking about very large debts, they mainly concern businesses that have often been closed for years.

In this context, another body, the professional chamber of Thessaloniki, with a letter to the Minister of Finance Kyriakos Pierrakakis and the Minister of Labor Niki Kerameos (the 50 billion euros have reached the debts to EFKA) requests changes to the …available menu for debt settlement. Driven by the fact that the debts to the tax office increased compared to last year 4.56 billion euros, the chamber requests:

  • Increase to 36 installments of the fixed arrangement with a fixed interest rate of 3% and the possibility of erasing the interest in the case of early repayment. Today, the option given to public debt debtors for regular debts is the fixed arrangement of up to 12 installments with an interest rate of 4.34% or 24 installments with an interest rate of 5.84%. Only for debts confirmed by inheritance tax, tax or customs control is the possibility for 48 installments.
  • Establishment of an emergency arrangement of 120 installments. Not for all debts, however, but from an amount of debts and above that will be determined by the relevant ministries.
  • Possibility of lifting coercive measures and confiscations of bank accounts, after the settlement of debts to the public, through regulation, without the requirement of full repayment. A measure that, as the chamber notes, will also particularly help businesses, a large part of businesses cannot operate, be competitive and survive in the long term, as they are faced with forced collection measures imposed on them and restrictions on the issuance of tax and insurance information.

The Thessaloniki Chamber of Commerce considers that the adoption of its request – although almost no regulation of multiple installments had the expected results – will increase government revenue and will act as breath for small and medium-sized enterprises.