Don’t play with taxes

The slipshod manner in which the government takes decisions that affect thousands of families is truly infuriating. The back-and-forth over the imposition of value-added tax on private education shows that measures are adopted in a panic without anyone having first calculated what revenues they will bring in, who they will affect most and what the fallout will be.

The experience of two previous memorandums has shown us another aspect that Greece’s creditors should bear in mind when pushing for certain measures, and that is that tax hikes don’t always work. They are often shelved and sometimes they even lead to a drop in revenues for the state.

The usual tax dodgers in the market always find a way around new levies or figure out the loopholes, the state collects less and the economy sinks deeper into the red instead of becoming healthier.

Tax policy is not a matter to take lightly and the government needs to get serious.