Internal Revenue Service

The practice of paying income and property taxes to the state via credit card in nine or 12 monthly installments has been taken up by many more taxpayers in 2016, as they find themselves being required to pay more in tax every year.

The growing use of plastic money, combined with the increased value-added tax takings and the decision of more people to pay this year's Single Property Tax (ENFIA) in a lump sum sent the budget's net revenues soaring in September, which even came as a surprise to the Finance Ministry, which released the data on Tuesday.

Long queues to peak at the Tax Offices are reported on Friday, since it is the last day of the tax payments for millions of Greeks. The economic staff aims for 700 million Euros from ENFIA, 1,2 billion Euros from income taxes and at least 1 billion euros fom installments of old debts.

Taxpayers' expired debts to the state for this year expanded by 1.3 billion euros last month, taking the total of old and new debts to the tax authorities and social security funds to 91.5 billion euros, or more than half of the country's gross domestic product.

Millions of taxpayers will have to dish out about 1.8 billion euros by the end of this week to cover the second installment of income tax and the first payment of the Single Property Tax (ENFIA) due by September 30.

The government views this month as quite decisive in terms of the budget's execution, as a total of 4.7 billion euros will have to be collected by the end of the year.

Just 8 percent of taxpayers have submitted their tax statements for 2015 incomes, according to data from the General Secretariat for Public Revenue. The delay is attributed to the strike by accountants who oppose the new social security system, as well as to the absence of any hurry on the part of taxpayers to meet their obligations.

Citizens' capacity to pay taxes is diminishing by the year, and the latest data from the General Secretariat of Public Revenues show debts to the state on on the rise: In the first quarter of the year taxpayers' debts expanded by 3.22 billion euros, taking the sum of all debts to the tax authorities to more than 87 billion euros.

According to data from the Greek Finance Ministry, Greek households and businesses are unable to pay off overdue taxes to the state. In the first two months of 2016 the situation has deteriorated, a particularly worrisome development as the 2016 tax collection term has not even started. According to the data, the overdue tax payments in only 60 days have increased by 2.7bln Euros.

After five years of failed attempts, the U.S. Senate Republicans on Dec. 4 passed a symbolic partisan bill to gut President Barack Obama's signature healthcare reform law, but the effort has already been condemned to death by Obama's plans to veto it. 

The Greek Finance Ministry issued a statement ruling out an extension for the filing of citizen’s tax statements. It should be noted that the deadline for submitting tax statements is August 26. The statement underlines that: