Just 5% of tax fines cashed in Greece, report

Less than 5% of fines imposed on taxpayers by administrative courts in recent years have reached public coffers despite efforts being conducted through changes in tax legislation, local news site ekathimerini reported. According to the report, Greek Finance Ministry data show that the fines imposed for tax cases add up to €14 billion, or 7.2% of gross domestic product. This concerns fines imposed by the ministry’s Taxis Net monitoring mechanism, but which were disputed by taxpayers and ended up in court. The tax collection mechanism, however, has only managed to collect €688.5 million, or 4.91% of the total. Notably, the 14 billion figures include a €4.8-billion on the Acropolis stockbrokerage firm. Not even the 10% that should be paid ahead of referring the case to courts has been collected to date. According to the detailed data published by the General Secretariat for Information Systems on its website, outstanding tax cases amount to 117,382. This is certainly a major improvement on the 180,935 cases that were pending a year ago.