TAX NEWS - June 2010

Greece Tax: FinMin on tax evasion

Finance minister George Papaconstantinou on Friday urged everyone's contribution to the fight against corruption and tax evasion, during a morning visit to the headquarters of the ministry's Financial Crimes Squad (SDOE).

Papaconstantinou noted a substantial improvement in the effort thus far, compared with last year, and cited figures that 6,000 complaints over tax evasion have been submitted to the SDOE in the first five months of the year compared with barely 4,000 throughout all of last year (2009).

Further, the SDOE has confirmed fines of 1.5 billion euros for tax evasion in the first five months of 2010, compared with 700 million euros in all of 2009.

"Our aim is to restore justice," the minister said, and intimated at intensification of audits and inspections in the coming period to clamp down on tax evasion.