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Cleaning up Greece's wasteful and corrupt state sector, and regaining citizens' trust, will take years. The government is pinning its hopes on increasing tax revenues. Some of that will come from new taxes on items such as luxury goods and fuel. But Athens also insists it can raise $1.67 billion in the short term by cracking down on tax evasion. The government has promised a radical reform of the country's complex and inefficient tax system and says a comprehensive new law, which is intended both to simplify the system and to spread the tax burden more fairly, will...
...will be difficult. Greece's tax-collection system is an antiquated mess. The state's various financial-information databases are haphazard and fragmented. No single program can pull up all the data about a single taxpayer; without tedious manual cross-checks, there's no way to flag the Kolonaki doctor who is declaring a pittance but living in a multimillion-dollar apartment. So decentralized is the whole system that until recently, Greece's government didn't even know how many people it had on its payroll. (See 10 things to do in Athens...
Still, Greeks are bracing for the coming pain. With the economy already in recession, firms are trying to figure out how to survive until the crunch is over. Projects have been put on hold and credit is tight. Many are likely to lose their jobs, while budget cuts and tax hikes will further dampen the economy. "Everything is frozen," says financier Paul Papadopoulos. "It's a wait-and-see scenario." (See pictures of retailers which have gone out of business...
Most Greeks agree that the tax system (see following story) and the bloated public sector, nicknamed "the country's sickest patient," are at the root of Greece's current problems. In a country of 11 million people, almost 850,000 workers are employed by the state, which means they receive 14 monthly paychecks instead of 12. Many enjoy a work day that runs from 7:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. "The state must change the mentality of the public employee," says one investor and economist, Timos Mellisaris, who calls Greece's public sector "the last communist frontier." Greeks like...
According to an 80-page finance-ministry plan released on Jan. 15, that revolution will reduce spending by cutting operating expenses by 10% and freezing wages and new hiring. The plan also calls for an improved tax-collection system and the creation of an independent statistics service, which should make it harder for officials to manipulate data. Parliament has passed a 20% tax on alcohol and tobacco, and other tax hikes are rumored. This worries executives like Doros Constantinou, the CEO of Coca-Cola Hellenic, which sells soft drinks in 28 countries. "An increase in taxes will have an impact...