Greece ranks last in the OECD list due to the “volume” of overdue debts to the tax authorities.
The problem became worse during the economic crisis and remains extremely acute, despite the declassifications that the tax authority implements from time to time.
The multi-year recession and the damage it caused to individuals and businesses, the imposition of fines that remained uncollected, the difficulty of the tax audit mechanism to collect overdue debts in the midst of an economic crisis, but also the … tricks of the taxpayers, with the establishment of fake companies to load on these burdens and penalties, were some of the main reasons that led to the boom in arrears.
Interest and surcharges
The OECD survey uses the ratio of total arrears (note: they also include interest and surcharges imposed on debtors, whether natural or legal persons) to annual tax collections as a measure and based on this, Greece comes in first place, with a performance of 190.6%.
In recent years, there has been a significant improvement in the relative index (228.3% in 2020, 203% in 2021 and 190.6% in 2022), but this is not due to the reduction of accumulated arrears but to the increase in annual tax revenue.
Based on the OECD report, Italy is second with 181% (compared to 213% in 2020), followed by Brazil, Malta, India and Peru, as well as Bulgaria, which has reduced the relative index to 67.7%.
