Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said recent and continuous measures to curb tax evasion and avoidance in the country is absolutely necessary and was also a campaign pledge in successive elections by his ruling New Democracy (ND) party.
Mitsotakis spoke during an event organized by the national economy ministry and the Independent Authority for Public Revenue (IAPR or AADE) on the subject of modernizing the state’s revenue collection administration.
“I believe that the balance, both economic and political, is positive for society,” he said in reference to a question over so-called “political costs”, for his government, entailed in stricter tax collection measures.
“Additional revenues, which Greece managed to collect from combating tax evasion, are being returned to society, creating additional fiscal space for further tax reductions…As long as these structural measures have a permanent character, we will have the opportunity, even after 2025, to plan for other permanent tax cuts and will focus our attention on further relieving the middle class. This policy returns the surplus from additional revenues back to society,” he said.
In response to a press question on even more generous tax breaks for the middle class, Mitsotakis said the recently tabled 2024 draft budget already includes 12 such cuts.
“But we can be even more committed to tax relief until 2027. We need to see the implementation of the measures in 2025. They are structural measures. We have also taken extraordinary measures. This government did not hesitate to tax windfall profits of power producers and return the remittances to citizens. The government did not hesitate to tax the refineries. These are emergency measures that we generally don’t like; we prefer structural measures.”
Asked about VAT rates and the prospect of reductions, he said “a one-percentage point reduction in VAT equals approximately 1.5 billion euros in (less) revenue,” while citing the different levels of VAT rates on different goods.
