Greece unable to collect €12.6bn fines due to lack of staff

The Telegraph ^ | 7/6/2012 | Andrew Trotman

[mojito]

The figure amounts to 6.2pc of the debt-stricken country's GDP, Ekathimerini reported, citing data posted on the website of the Finance Ministry’s General Secretariat of Information Systems.

The report comes as Prime Minister Antonis Samaras today presents his economic plans for a country mired in a fifth year of recession despite two international bailouts and a raft of reforms.

As Greece struggles with an unemployment rate of 22.6pc, the country's tax collection mechanism has only managed to take in €630m - 4.77pc of the total €13.2bn fines - due to being understaffed and the absence of electronic applications.

The court orders came about after some taxpayers disputed the fines imposed by the mechanism.

There are currently more than 180,000 outstanding tax cases in the Greek courts. But while Athens had intended to have 50pc of the pending cases heard by last month and 80pc by the end of December, ministry data indicate that only 2.1pc cases made it to court in the first half of the year, Ekathimerini claimed.

[mojito]

This is what is looks like when you run out of other people's money. Greece is the poster child of the death of the welfare state.

[longtermmemmory]

you can’t tax yourself into prosperity.
not even greece.

[expat2]

They should have spent their money on tax/fine collection, instead of feather-bedding public employees.

[kingu]

Let’s see.. First, stop paying all the priests in the country. And then stop taxing all the donations made at churches. State that all existing pensions paid for by the state for religious personnel will no longer be honored.

That ought to get some of the problem out of the way.

[Eleven Bravo 6 319thID]

That is really funny. When a country finally gets to the point where nobody thinks they should need to work, it does not matter how high the taxes are because they cannot get anybody to collect the taxes. That place is just like one huge opium den.