Sounds like Greece might be heading towards revolution...

[gingerjedi]

I think one of the problems with Greece is a large part of tourism and other sectors operates in the Black economy. Current mesures will effect the people who pay taxes, mesures to bring the Black economy into the tax paying loop having little effect.

BBC News - No tax please, we're Greek

http://www.asecu.gr/Seeje/issue06/katsios.pdf

"the range of the Greek Underground Economy at from 20% to 25% of GDP"

It's no coincidence that Spain finds itself in a similar predicament, they too have a large black market economy and rely heavily on tourism.

Since my dad retired he's been painting villas and cleaning pools for years, never paid a penny in tax even though he enquired how he should go about it. My step brother is the same, not sure what he's doing now but he spent much of the last 10 years on building sites in Spain, again he's never paid a penny.

[alreadypacked]

I looked through the report, but I was surprised by it's recommendations. They are linking the Black Economy with corruption.

"The best policy to reduce corruption could be a sharp reduction of the effective
control that government has over the Greek economy in a lot of aspects like spending
and taxing activities and, especially, in economic regulations. Furthermore, owing
to the fact that one of the factors that create the environment that promotes corruption
is social intimacy, an effective policy in reducing corruption is that of forced
and periodic geographical mobility for civil servants, in order to remove them from
the region where they have their closest social or family relations and to prevent the
formation of new relations."

[Churchill]

I looked through the report, but I was surprised by it's recommendations. They are linking the Black Economy with corruption.

"The best policy to reduce corruption could be a sharp reduction of the effective
control that government has over the Greek economy in a lot of aspects like spending
and taxing activities and, especially, in economic regulations. Furthermore, owing
to the fact that one of the factors that create the environment that promotes corruption
is social intimacy, an effective policy in reducing corruption is that of forced
and periodic geographical mobility for civil servants, in order to remove them from
the region where they have their closest social or family relations and to prevent the
formation of new relations."

A similar MO was used in policing during the eighties here in the UK.

[threaded]

A similar MO was used in policing during the eighties here in the UK.

And it didn't work.

[NickFitz]

Plenty of people choose to vote Liebor - I don't know what they expect

Plenty of people don't. I'm not sure what they expect, but I know what they'll get - the same old piss in a different shaped bottle.

[Drewster]

Get down to the costa's and spend spend spend.

You think Coffee is going to help!!!