All taxpayer groups declare lower incomes

The latest tax and social security reform that imposed a huge burden on taxpayers has led to a rise in tax evasion and a drop in incomes from salaries, pensions and properties.

Data from 2017 tax statements (for 2016 incomes), which have now been seen by both the Finance Ministry and the country’s creditors, will apparently be a key focus of negotiations for the third review as next year’s primary surplus must climb to 3.5 percent of gross domestic product and meeting that ambitious target will depend on public revenues.

Besides the 900-million-euro annual decline in the declared incomes of the self-employed, salary workers, pensioners and 1.5 million property owners have also declared a decline in their incomes: Salary workers and pensioners stated they earned 57.9 billion euros in 2016 against 58.75 billion in 2015 – a loss of 864 million euros – and landlords collected 5.962 billion euros against 6.083 billion a year earlier – a decline of 121 million euros.