No taxis today and tomorrow in Attica due to the mobilizations for the new tax bill.

The Attica Taxi Union (SATA) has decided that the strike will start today, Wednesday, and will continue tomorrow, Thursday.

As stated in the announcement of SATA “if the bill is passed on Thursday then the strike will continue on Thursday as well. Otherwise (another voting date) a new strike date will be set.”

The Panhellenic Taxi Federation (POEIATA), which covers the primary taxi unions throughout the country, has started a strike since yesterday.

At 1 p.m. he has called for a rally against the tax measures in Syntagma Square coordinating committee of Independent Professionals-Scientists-Professionals-Traders.

The announcement of the committee

The new tax measures promoted by the Government do not, unfortunately, combat tax evasion, on the contrary, they affect freelancers, scientists and small and medium-sized businesses, which carry out their activity individually and protect large incomes and companies.

The Government, if it really seeks to combat tax evasion, must make use of the modern control tools (indirect control techniques, mydata, connection of cash registers with the Ministry of Finance, installation of POS, etc.), which it boasts of having at its disposal, and not resort to anachronistic practices of establishing presumptions, which act unfairly and levellingly.

The introduction of taxable presumptive income, i.e. taxation for income that has not been earned, leads to a significant financial burden on a large part of self-employed professionals, scientists and small and medium-sized businesses, which is added exponentially to their already existing financial problems, as a result of more than ten years of economic and social crisis, due to memoranda, pandemic, energy crisis, punctuality and inflation.

The Government seems to be ignoring the data it has and which prove that a significant part of the active potential of the Greek economy, the middle class, is unable to meet its basic obligations, has significant debts to the State, Banks, Insurance Funds and has lost debt arrangements with immediate risk of taking stalking measures against him.

In fact, the Government, in order to support its choices, classifies all self-employed professionals as tax evaders and at the same time uses arbitrary criteria and arguments to justify the determination of presumptive taxable income.

He tries to identify self-employed people with employees, while he knows that these are different categories, as the Supreme Court has ruled (decisions 1880 and 1888/2019) and that self-employed people do not have the tax-free income nor the discounts and exemptions of employees. And at the same time, to determine the presumptive taxable income, it uses the gross salary, including gifts and social security contributions, and not the net.

Furthermore, the presumptive taxable income is increased on the one hand based on the time of practicing the profession and on the other hand cumulatively based on the annual payroll costs and based on the average of the annual turnover of KAD. The latter has the result, on the one hand, of taxation based on the income of third parties, in violation of article 4 par. 5 of the Constitution, which foresees that everyone participates in the public burdens according to their abilities, and on the other hand, that incurred professional expenses are not recognized, a profound measure anti-development and enhancing tax evasion.

The claim that the evidence is rebuttable is pretentious on the one hand because it concerns only specific categories and on the other hand because any challenge to the evidence, judicially or administratively, becomes in practice, as has been proven in the vast majority of cases, useless. Also, optional audit leads to quasi-closing of cases and further expansion of tax evasion at the expense of honest self-employed tax payers.

The professional and scientific bodies are helpful in the fight against tax evasion, which, however, requires a substantial dialogue between all bodies, with the aim of a fair tax system that will take into account the real conditions of development of the Greek economy and the particularities of each profession and will have as based on everyone’s contribution to public burdens according to their real strengths and not on “imputed” and absolutely non-existent incomes.

For all of us, the withdrawal of the new tax measures is a matter of vital importance to both our existence and our dignity and is therefore non-negotiable.

We express our strong reaction to the tax measures being promoted

We invite all our colleagues to the protest rally, which we are organizing against the tax measures on Tuesday, December 5, 2023 at 13:00 at Syntagma.