By G. Palaitsakis
[email protected]
Expectations by the finance ministry and the independent public assets authority to collect significant revenues from at least three different lists of Greek citizens with major deposits overseas appear to have completely fizzled out, due in part to sluggish bureaucracy but especially to two 2017 high court decisions stipulating statutes of limitations in tax cases.
The three lists are the so-called "Lagarde" and Borjans" lists, as well as a registry of major wire or bank transfers of capital abroad.
According to the latest figures, which were submitted to Parliament over the recent period, as of Jan. 1, 2018 very few tax audits are now possible against taxpayers on the three lists. At the same time, only a portion of the amounts verified as taxable or the product of tax evasion are ever collected by the Greek state.
Since 2014 and until March 2014, the number of audits against individuals on the three lists has not exceeded 6 percent of the total - i.e. 38,000 cases. Verified taxable income from the audits, over the same four-year period, also do not exceed 930 million euros, whereas the money that actually flowed into Greek state coffers reached a very paltry 114.4 million euros.
