The new tax legislation and Poul Thomsen

The changes to the taxation of the self-employed and freelancers proposed by the Finance Ministry brought to mind a discussion I had in 2012 in Washington with Poul Thomsen, the then head of the International Monetary Fund's mission for Greece and later the Fund's director for Europe.

Antonis Samaras had just been elected prime minister. When I told Thomsen that Greek governments are trying to implement the required reforms but "some of the measures you are asking of them are not easy to implement and others seem too harsh," he replied that he and the IMF staff monitoring Greece had become well acquainted with Greek realities, knew the people making the decisions and, more importantly, could detect what they were really willing to do. In the same spirit he added that one thing people from the Fund focused on was whether Greek premiers and responsible ministers would dare...