Ducking taxes in Greece

Greek Wealth Is Everywhere, Just Not on Tax Forms

Excerpts:

Various studies, including one by the Federation of Greek Industries last year, have estimated that the government may be losing as much as $30 billion a year to tax evasion — a figure that would have gone a long way to solving its debt problems.

“We need to grow up,” said Ioannis Plakopoulos, who like all owners of newspaper stands will have to give receipts and start using a cash register under the new tax laws passed last month. “We need to learn not to cheat or to let others cheat.”

...

Experts point out that ducking taxes is part of a broader culture of bribery and corruption that is deeply entrenched.

Mr. Plakopoulos, who supports most of the government’s new efforts, admits that he and his friends used to chuckle over the best ways to avoid taxes.

To get more attentive care in the country’s national health system, Greeks routinely pay doctors cash on the side, a practice known as “fakelaki,” the Greek word for little envelope. And bribing government officials to grease the wheels of bureaucracy is so standard that people know the rates. They say, for instance, that 300 euros, about $400, will get you an emission inspection sticker.

Some of the most aggressive tax evaders, experts say, are the self-employed, a huge pool of people in this country of small businesses. It includes not just taxi drivers, restaurant owners and electricians, but engineers, architects, lawyers and doctors.

The cheating is often quite bold. When tax authorities recently surveyed the returns of 150 doctors with offices in the trendy Athens neighborhood of Kolonaki, where Prada and Chanel stores can be found, more than half had claimed an income of less than $40,000. Thirty-four of them claimed less than $13,300, a figure that exempted them from paying any taxes at all.

Such incomes defy belief, said Ilias Plaskovitis, the general secretary of the Finance Ministry, who has been in charge of revamping the country’s tax laws. “You need more than that to pay your rent in that neighborhood,” he said.

He said there were only a few thousand citizens in this country of 11 million who last year declared an income of more than $132,000. Yet signs of wealth abound.

“There are many people with a house, with a cottage in the country, with two cars and maybe a small boat who claim they are earning 12,000 euros a year,” Mr. Plaskovitis said, which is about $15,900. “You cannot heat this house or buy the gas for the car with that kind of income.”

Comment: Yet Germany is willing to bail them out!

My childrens' tax problems

Use of Free Car Lands Tom Daschle in Tax Trouble

Excerpt:

On Friday, members of the Finance Committee received a report on the vetting of Mr. Daschle, done by members of the committee staff from both parties. The report says that he paid back taxes and interest totaling $32,090 for 2005, $38,507 for 2006 and $69,570 for 2007.

The Finance Committee document said Mr. Daschle had amended his tax returns to show “unreported income from the use of a car service in the amounts of $73,031, $89,129 and $93,096 in 2005, 2006 and 2007, respectively.”

An administration official said Mr. Daschle’s failure to pay the taxes was “a stupid mistake.” But, the official said, Mr. Daschle should not be penalized because he had discovered the tax liability himself, paid up and brought it to the committee’s attention.

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“Under Section 132 of the Internal Revenue Code, the value of transportation services provided for personal use must be included in income,” the report said. “Senator Daschle estimated that he used the car and driver 80 percent for personal use and 20 percent for business.”

The car and driver were not Mr. Daschle’s only problems. The Finance Committee said he failed to report consulting income of $83,333 on his 2007 tax return and overstated the deductions to which he was entitled for charitable contributions from 2005 to 2007. In his amended tax returns, he reduced the deductions by $14,963.

Under his consulting arrangement with InterMedia, the report said, Mr. Daschle received $1 million a year, or $83,333 a month. The payment to Mr. Daschle for May 2007 was omitted from the annual statement of income sent to him by InterMedia. Ms. Backus said the omission resulted from “a clerical error by InterMedia.”

Comment: If I put "my children" in the title, they will read it! My children DID NOT PAY TAXES on the free use of cars that I provided for them. I am officially and publicly posting this - that they violated Section 132 of the Internal Revenue Code! About Tom Daschle .... I only say "not like us"!

The illogic of ‘Tax Defiers’

U.S. Says It Will Increase Efforts Against ‘Tax Defiers’

Excerpt:

If you think paying taxes is unfair, illegal or unconstitutional, then watch out — the Justice Department is after you.

Just as the Internal Revenue Service is getting into its perennial tax-season tough talk, Justice Department officials weighed in Tuesday with a vow to ramp up efforts against “tax defiers.”

A tax defier is not a wealthy individual who buys a sophisticated tax shelter in a fraudulent effort to shield legitimate income from taxes. Nor is a defier a taxpayer who has a difference of opinion with the I.R.S. over deductions, or one who challenges specific tax policies enacted by Congress.

A tax defier, according to a Justice Department statement, is someone who “seeks to deny and defy the fundamental validity of the tax laws.”

“The tax defier is someone who rejects the legal foundation of the tax system, despite decades of legal precedent upholding the system’s constitutional and statutory validity, and who takes specific and concrete action to violate the law,” the department’s statement said.

Such people were once more commonly known as tax protesters. A spokesman for Justice said Tuesday that the department official who announced the new program, Nathan J. Hochman, the assistant attorney general for the tax division, “is calling them defiers because he feels ‘protesters’ implies constitutionally protected rights.”

Comment: Think Kent Hovind now blogging from a federal penitentiary!

Hovind was originally reported to the IRS by Pensacola Christian College senior vice president Rebekah Horton in the mid 1990s, after she learned of Hovind's anti-tax stand. "'We know the Scriptures do not promote (tax evasion),'" Horton said in testimony against Hovind during his 2006 trial, "'It's against Scripture teaching'.... Horton believed it was the college's duty to report the misleading doctrine. 'I didn't want to see innocent people get led astray,' she said. Pensacola Christian College then decided its students no longer were permitted to work with Creation Science Evangelism".