Following on from "Europe and its funny money", Vanity Fair, the American magazine, has an interesting article on tax evasion in Greece.
Now I have yet to meet anybody that pays tax and enjoys paying it, but as bad as we thought Greek tax evasion was, it is worse:
"The "shadow economy"—business that's legal but off the books—is larger in Greece than in almost any other European country, accounting for an estimated 27.5 per cent of its G.D.P."
With more than one quarter of government revenue being siphoned off – mainly by those that can afford it – the prognosis does not look good.
The article concludes:
"The reason tax reform will be such a tall order for Greece, in sum, is that it requires more than a policy shift; it requires a cultural shift. Pulling that off would be quite a feat. But the future of the European Union may depend on it."
