He turned his back and started twisting a piece of copper wire. I followed and in my bad Greek explained that I needed a receipt for my insurance company to show that I had paid for the repair to my car radio. He turned, ‘tsk’d’ his tongue, and gave me the beady eye. I didn’t budge; just stared right back. He took a dirty card from his pocket and wrote ‘5000 drachmas’ on the back. I grabbed it and drove away…
The fish lay muddled on the marble slab. “Fresco”, said the damp-aproned owner of the side street seafood stall. “Poli orea” (very good), he continued, holding up a dripping fish. “Poli expensive,” I replied. He gutted it and dropped my pentohiliaro (5000-drachma note) into the drawer. He handed me the small amount of fish in a plastic bag together with four wet 100-drachrna notes – but no receipt.
The doctor had been recommended by a friend. “Beautiful,” he said as he fastened the X-ray of my lower spine to the light box on the wall. “Nothing wrong with your back… just rest, take these pain killers and don’t lift anything heavy.” He took down the large transparency, slipped it into an envelope and sat down at the cluttered desk. “What do I owe you, doctor?” I said. He lifted up ten long fingers. I gave him 10,000 drachmas. “May I have a receipt?” His eyebrows started to rise. “Not for here,” I blurted, “I need it for my medical insurance in England; nothing official – just on a letterhead will do nicely.”
Poor country, rich people.
So much of the cash circulation in Greece is outside the grasp of the tax-man; rough estimate 40 percent is para, polite for ‘black’. The system is so old, so pervasive and so normal that there is nothing furtive about it. Money changes hands through services, small traders or professionals without the distasteful use of official receipts. It has always been that way and always probably will be.
Why?
So much of the cash circulation in Greece is outside the grasp of the taxman.
Maybe because for several hundred years Greeks did not tax themselves; they were taxed by an occupying power (in some areas leiss than 50 years ago). Thus it was natural for Greeks to hide as much as they could from the grasping hand of the alien tax collectors; and within two or three generations it is difficult for the traditional system to change. People still think of taxes as expropriation of their hard earned wealth by an oppressor who gives nothing in return. In any case, cheating the taxman is a way of life.
If beneficial use it, if detrimental ignore it With self-government the nothing-in-return has given way to something -something that the elected government has passed back to its citizenry in the way of services: road communication, for instance, police protection and, for those who vote right, jobs – above all jobs. The largest chunk of taxes collected by the government has gone into ‘make-work’. The public sector in Greece is about a quarter of a million bodies overweight – all placed for their ‘traditional’ votes. Old habits die hard and the population as a whole has continued to treat the government as an adversary taxwise, and as a patron jobwise.
The population has continued to treat the government as an adversary taxwise, and as a patron jobwise.
This follows through to the law: if beneficial use it, if detrimental ignore it. It follows that the elected government is nothing more nor less than a fount of patronage peopled by self-seekers suspiciously watching that others do not seize the advantages they consider theirs exclusively.
Tax evasion and tax avoidance are not, of course, unique to Greece. Every country suffers from it in one way or another. Its size and percentage of a country’s GDP (Gross Domestic Product) is related to three things: One, the stringency of the tax; two, the traditions of the country: three, the perceived payback by the government in services. On all three counts the Greek, given the least opportunity, is a tax evader. The highly taxed wage earner has his removed before he gets his pay. The only thing he can do is demand more money or take a second job in the para-economy – often both.
The para-economy pays no VAT (Value Added Tax) and therefore the EC coffers are robbed of that portion of the Greek economy, not forgetting the slap in the face to all Greek citizens who are forced to pay tax, and high tax at that, by payroll deduction.
The EC see this black market merely as indicative of the general state of Greece’s economic and financial infrastructure. This loss of income to the EC plus the seeming inability of Greece to carry out their promised reforms is well known in Brussels. Right now the EC financial watchdogs are more concerned over the question of Greece’s 1991 excess deficit of over 400 billion drachma plus the country’s seeming inability to reduce its public sector. But like The Force the para-economy is with us and nobody knows how much damage it is doing to the Greek economy.
There are plenty of money scandals in other EC countries as well as in Japan and the US. But, rightly or wrongly, they are perceived as aberrations not as the norm. In Greece the para-economy, tax evasion and financial irresponsibility are the norm.
“Receipt?” said the dentist with his drill touching my aching tooth. “Uh huh,” I moaned raising my eyebrows.
