Tax

The lump-sum taxation might be more appropriate for both the business environment and the National Tax Administration Agency (ANAF), given that 45,000 companies out of 1.2 million contribute 98 percent of the state budget revenues, Minister of Public Finance Eugen Teodorovici on Tuesday told the conference "Tax Policies for Financial Restructuring and the Support of the Business Environment." "

New Democracy leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis on Friday presented the main opposition party's policy program for rebooting the Greek economy and easing the burden on middle-income taxpayers.

The tax administration is planning more than 50,000 inspections around the country from July 1 to October 31, with an emphasis on regions which are witnessing increased tourism traffic.

"Such high taxation strengthens coffee smuggling and reduces the chances for investments," commented Mario Cerutti, president of the European Coffee Federation (ECF), as he described the consequences of coffee taxation in Greece.

The inability of the Finance Ministry's political administration to expand the online transaction requirement for the tax discount from 10 percent to 15-20 percent, over fears of taxpayer reactions, has contained the growth rate of card transactions in Greece.

An avalalanche of over a dozen new taxes and tax hikes imposed during SYRIZA's four-and-a-half years in power is widely considered the main reason for the disastrous result of the 26 May European Parliament election.

The government's long string of tax hikes was in large measure due to its inability to meet fiscal targets agreed to with creditors.

The government's tax measures have failed to fetch additional revenues, while generating more expired debts and leading to the concealment of incomes and the shrinking of the middle classes, figures show.

Last week, Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos himself gave a definition of the middle classes, putting their incomes at between 20,000 and 45,000 euros.

Almost a million taxpayers have ended up on the losing side following the cancellation of the so-called countermeasures that were seen accompanying the now-scrapped reduction of the tax-free threshold, which according to a European Commission representative is problematic.

Greece on Friday scrapped plans to force people to pay more tax on their incomes from next year, less than a month before a parliamentary election.

Having tabled a bill rescinding a legislated reduction of the tax-free threshold on personal income tax backed that was scheduled to take effect on 1 January, 2020, the government has said it plans to implement a series of counter-austerity measures that the PM had announced in the past.