Journalist Arrested In Greece For Publishing List of Possible Tax-Evaders

kyriacos writes "The Greek government is charging journalist Kostas Vaxevanis with violation of the data privacy law for publishing a list of about 2,000 Greeks who hold accounts with the HSBC bank in Switzerland. While more and more austerity measures are being taken against the people of Greece, there is still no investigation of tax evasion for the people on this list by the government. The list has been in the possession of the Greek government since 2010."

Comments

He should be jailed

[multiben]

Evading tax is every Greeks' right and what has made Greece the economic powerhouse it is today.

Re:He should be jailed

[PolygamousRanchKid]

My first thought was, "Who needs a list? Just pick up a copy of the Athens Telephone Book."

Re:He should be jailed

[Sulphur]

My first thought was, "Who needs a list? Just pick up a copy of the Athens Telephone Book."

What an unorthodox use of mathematical symbols.

Re:He should be jailed

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, if your friend told you so, then by all means you're right to be modded "informative". Although the truth is that only a minority of the people tax evade in Greece. People who are not self-employed or business owners, get their taxes withheld from their monthly salary (and that makes about 60% of the greek workforce). They may or may not pay more or get some money back at the end of the year, depending on their total income/spending.

The are reasons that the view that we shouldn't pay taxes is somewhat more widespread in Greece than in other countries, though. When you have a corrupt government, and a broken down pubic education and healthcare system, you really don't like giving part of the wealth you produce to bankers, weapon dealers and friends of the govenment. Greece was one of the top countries in buying weapons (mainly from the U.S.) before the crisis started, and there were tons of scandals involving greek politicians getting money under the table to close some weapon deals.

Moreover, the greek tax system resembles the way the Mafia works. Every year, for the last ten years, the government makes you an offer. It'll ask for about 500-1000 euros (depending on how much income you actually declared) and in return they promise to never check your books for that year. The more you're tax evading, the more of a bargain this is. If you're not tax evading though, you'll probably take their offer anyway. Why? Because Greece has a very complicated tax system and if they check your tax declarations really close (which they'll do if you don't take their offer) they'll probably find something to fine you for an you'll end up paying more. Although this has slowed down a bit the last 2-3 years, as people don't have 500 euros to pay to the IRS anyway.

Oh, and the Olympics did not bankrupt the government because of tax evasion. They bankrupted the government because the construction companies in greece are in bed with the governement (the same ppl own the media and most of the banks). The government paid huge amounts for the olympic works to the construction companies. I still recall the case of a stadium that was to be renovated for a budget of a million euros. We ended up paying 20.

The money that greece is being given now (as debt), move in two directions: most of them, repay previous loans (so they go to banks), and some of them go directly to the greek banks. So, the german taxpayer loans money to the greek government. The money go straight to the greek and foreign banks and the greek people now have a debt towards the german (and the rest of the EU) people. It's not fair for the greek people and it's not fair for the german people.

The greek media all support the current status quo and for a good reason. There are no greek media that are economically succesfull. They have never been, not for one year. They survive with loans. The only reason that banks loan money year after year to the greek media although they know that they're not going to get paid back, is that the media in return support the current situation.

Tax records

[Anonymous Coward]

Tax records are public documents in Finland. In fact, they are published as an annual bestseller (two pieces of information are listed: the reported annual income and the total tax).

The logic is the same as with court records. The citizens need to be able to trust that the tax system treats everybody fairly.

Re:Tax records

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't heard people complaining about the openness of the tax system.

But let me shock you some more: most fines are not specified in absolute amounts. Instead, they are specified as percentages of your reported annual income. When the police stop you for doing 20 km/h over the speed limit, they pull out their smartphones and look up your previous year's tax filing to figure out the amount of your fine. Some fortunate individuals have had to pay well over a hudred thousand dollars for speeding.

Again, there's logic there. While in the U.S. you are sometimes ordered to do community service, in Finland you don't have to take time off your precious profession. Instead, the government rules that for a number of days, you work for the community in your present job. In other words, the government confiscates the wages you earned during those days. You get a lesson but your career is not jeopardized.

Re:Get out of Greece now.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes everybody pull your money out because that will make it better.

Re:Get out of Greece now.

[MtHuurne]

The difference between a Swiss bank and a bank in another European country is that Swiss banks don't share information about the account balance with the governments of their respective clients. So while having a Swiss bank account doesn't necessarily mean someone is evading taxes, the vast majority of the people evading taxes will use Swiss bank accounts.

21-32 trillion (includes all offshore accounts)

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey many billions -- nay, TRILLIONS -- of dollars have wealthy individuals from around the globe hidden in Swiss bank accounts?

Since you ask, around 21-32 trillion: as much as the US and Japanese economies combined.
http://www.taxjustice.net/cms/upload/pdf/The_Price_of_Offshore_Revisited_Presser_120722.pdf
That includes all off shore accounts, not just Swiss.

Control of information is power

[EmperorOfCanada]

This is a classic case of government panicking when they lose control of information and thus power. I find when a government spends too much time controlling information they tend to forget what they are actually supposed to be doing. I love how this compares to a functioning government like Norway where you can access people's tax records online. There are a few odd rules though; there is a time window and I believe that people know who has accessed their records. Thus the open information includes knowing which of your neighbours are nosy. But the best part is the first year they went online the public found famous rich people claiming $150,000 in income resulting in investigations.

Re:Get out of Greece now.

[Sir_Sri]

There is a legitimate point that inflation is what Greece, Spain, Italy and Portual need. Now ideally they would get there from a eurozone inflation of target of 4% and ease through this gradually (as the US generally has), but the other option will be for the Eurozone to break up, and they would likely be first to be kicked out (unless the germans leave first, which would help too).

Inflation devalues debt. Since one persons debt is anothers holding you can see the issue. But of course most people don't have a lot of money in cash assets. They have houses and stocks and so on.

Rightly, what he's complaining about is that reducing the value of a currency can make your labour worth less. This is true, and tied in concept to something in economics called nominal wage rigidity. Basically no one wants to take a face value pay cut. So to make your economy more competitive (more exports, more tourists, less imports, less of your people touring elsewhere) you want to reduce your own costs, and one way to do that is inflation.

Greece is essentially a balance of payments problem, all of the euro area is, combined with a monetary but not a fiscal union. If it wasn't for defence, medicare and medicaid and social security being *federal* in the US a lot of states would be in deep trouble right now. But because relatively rich areas keep sending money to poorer areas (especially areas that are poor because of the housing bubble and the now market bubble). What the greeks need is to decrease their costs relative to germany to attract investment, or get direct payments from germany. Either would work. The first, when in the Euro, is a mess, the Euro area could aim for a larger inflation target, essentially they'd decrease costs against everyone else at least, Greece might not be more competitive against germany but it would at least be more competitive against the US and Japan and China. The latter, which is essentially what the germans are talking about, European Federalism, seems to be a non starter politically.

So sure, he's shilling gold, and gold isn't a hedge against anything, it's just a metal that varies wildly in price, in part based on fears about inflation. Small persistent inflation (fiat currencies trend down) is a feature, not a defect of the system. But there's a kernel of truth to the fact that a lot of people in europe are looking at greece and figuring they want to having their money somewhere else, because if the Euro area starts kicking people out rather than actually solving problems a lot of people are going to get really fucked in the short term, and there they really might be better with bars of metal than cash. Incidentally, as other people have pointed out, this reality is why the barter system is picked back up, and is preventing major investment, so between that and austerity greece is only going to get worse unless there's some serious credible move towards an actual european solution, and given that, bars of any metal, even iron might be better than Greece Euros.

Re:Get out of Greece now.

[Anonymous Coward]

The ads are to hold the price up long enough for the early purchasers to convert to yuan.

FTFY

Re:Get out of Greece now.

[jelizondo]

I undid many moderations to inform you, so appreciate it.

The Cayman Islands have signed enough tax-treaties to get into the "white list" of the OCDE. Google it or just read this.

Depending on your nationality and preferences, today you go to Singapore, Belize, Holland or Panama.

Re:Get out of Greece now.

[Vaphell]

... and believe it's some moral failure of the greeks in not paying their debts which has nothing to do with reality

not that i am a fan of further unification; care to elaborate how it's not a failure of the greeks? Who took those massive debts and spent everything on hookers and blow? Martians? Oh, those evul bureaucrats in government who schemed with foreign bankers and cheated the honest uncorrupted greek society... but who voted for them? Santa Claus?
Did they expect to load on debt ad infinitum to fund lavish welfare programs without any consequences?

Their taxes as a % of gdp and spending as a % of GDP were not radically different from the rest of the euro area for the last decade

so i guess you missed the fact they had no problem with lying their way into the monetary union, cooking the books every single year, marking everything to fantasy and doing that shady credit default swap business with GS to move shitton of expenses off the balance sheet. Yup, everything would be rainbows and ponies if only zee germans left them alone.