Storm of protests has raised in the last few days the tax bill, which the government is promoting, with which he will put horizontal taxation on all freelancerswith a goal to crack down on tax evasion.
According to evidence that has seen the light of day,there are bar owners who systematically declare less than 7,000 euros of “net” annual income, car repair shops with just over 6,000 euros a year, hair salons with an annual profit of 3,439 euros and the list of tax evasion is endless.
The plan of the Ministry of Finance comes, in theory, to more fairly distribute the pie of tax burdens, even with the “tool” of presumptions, which has met with reactions from many sectors.
We have chosen five people from Achaia from industries that declare low incomes to give their opinion to “Monday’s Peloponnese”.
“AGE CRITERIA”
-THE taxi owner Dinos Tzouvekas he argued: “I know there are colleagues in Patras who declare exactly what they collect and we must not overlook that the turnover has decreased in our industry in recent years due to the accuracy which has led many not to take taxis. Some, then, do indeed have low incomes. Also, with regard to the new tax system, there cannot and should not be horizontal taxation for everyone because the differences in taxi turnover between the tourist areas, Athens and the region are huge. How will I and an Athenian taxi driver be taxed? However, as in all industries, in ours there may be some who do not declare their real incomes. But this is an exception.”
-OR Marilena Vergou, a young lawyer who has been practicing the profession for the past three years, stated: “There is a wrong social perception that wants the lawyer’s profession to be intertwined with high fees and “tendencies” to hide them. But this is an arbitrary generalization that does justice to the struggling lawyers. It is a fact that many lawyers appear to declare low annual incomes, but in the majority of them, these are their real incomes. Especially in a city like Patras, where there is a numerical abundance of lawyers and in fact disproportionate to its population, cases are limited and divided among several lawyers. In addition, there are young lawyers, myself included, who are in their first professional steps and it is logical that they do not show high annual incomes due to their young age, lack of clientele and lack of legibility. The state must see the characteristics of each profession and not with punitive measures for everyone because of the “few” who expose an entire industry”.
–The president of the Association of Hairdressers of the Prefecture of Achaia, Kostas Tsakrilas argued: “It is not the case that our industry is tax evasive. Some of the reasons are that, post-coronavirus, people have learned to cut their hair at home, and a percentage of them have not returned to the shops. Another reason is the illegal hair salons for which we have fought and the state should intervene. Our turnover is down a lot and there is no more room for anyone to steal. Assuming a percentage don’t return what they’re collecting, I reckon they’re doing it to keep their businesses alive.”
–Theofanis Pavlopoulos, owner of a car workshop for a number of years he underlined: “It is unfair to say that car workshops are tax evaders. And this is because, now, the majority of customers ask to pay via POS, whenever this option is not available. It may be possible that some neighborhood garages without large turnovers do not cut all the documents, but the majority that have a turnover, because the customers are professionals, cut invoices for all the services they provide».
–The owner of the bar and, for many years, entrepreneur of catering and leisure centers Giorgos Kotopoulis which has a long track in the field, he emphasized: “There are all categories in our industry. Those who declare little because they really make little, those who make but don’t declare everything, and those who turnover and are completely typical. There is also a category that some colleagues join, but keep the shop to have a few years’ worth of marks and draw a pension. In short, it is forbidden to have a loss, it is forbidden to be poor, it is forbidden to wait for a pension and it is forbidden to help the wife. The bill destroys the small and medium-sized business”.
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