Excessive taxation bolsters black economy

Overtaxation pushes economic activity underground and kills honest entrepreneurship, says the Hellenic Federation of Enterprises (SEV), stressing that salary workers and pensioners have shouldered most of the burden in recent years while efforts to uncover undeclared taxable income and assets have failed.

The federation's weekly bulletin explained that the accumulated tax and social security obligations to the state now amount to 120 billion euros, with half of the country's taxpayers in arrears.

PricewaterhouseCoopers data show that Greek corporations face the sixth highest tax to pretax earnings ratio - including taxation on corporate profits, on labor and other levies - among 32 European countries. Greece's rate stands at 50.1 percent while the European average is 40.3 percent. This breaks down to 22.4 percent in tax on corporate profits and 27.7 percent related to...