Agents from the Financial and Economic Crime Unit sat at the Three Little Pigs Cafe bar in Athens recently working a stakeout to find a suspected tax cheat–the Three Little Pigs owner. These Greek government gumshoes were soon asking to look at customers’ receipts to see if the night club was collecting value-added taxes.
“Armed with a new law devised to help Greece crack down on tax cheats, the agents shut the cafe for the next 48 hours because, they said, receipts were missing,” the New York Times reports. “Across the city, other restaurants and nightclubs were also being padlocked, their names showing up in the local newspapers, their front doors sealed for all to see.”
Greek authorities believe their government is losing $30 billion a year because taxpayers aren’t paying what they owe. “We have learned a lot,” said Ilias Plaskovitis, the general secretary of the Finance Ministry. “We have had great success in identifying who owes taxes, but much less in collecting them.”
Doctors magically just report enough income to remain under the higher-rate thresholds. “When tax authorities recently surveyed the returns of 150 doctors with offices in the trendy Athens neighborhood of Kolonaki, where Prada and Chanel stores can be found, more than half had claimed an income of less than $40,000. Thirty-four of them claimed less than $13,300, a figure that exempted them from paying any taxes at all.”
The Greek government has determined from satellite photos that 10,000 wealthy Greeks own pools, which are taxed, but only 324 admit it. As you would imagine sales of green, grass-like pool covers are brisk.
A proposal to jail tax evaders for 20 years is being submitted to Parliament at the same time more citizens than ever before are turning in their neighbors for tax avoidance.
Meanwhile across the pond, President Obama has proposed a $3.7 trillion dollar budget, $100 billion less than last year. The President says he’s making the tough choices, trimming $1 trillion from federal government spending over the next decade.
While the president may be holding the line on spending for most federal agencies, the one agency people love to hate–the Internal Revenue Service–is getting more money and more troops if Mr. Obama has his way. The White House is requesting that the IRS be budgeted for 5,100 more agents and a 9.4 percent increase in its budget, to $13.28 billion. Reuters reports this would allow for a roughly 5 percent increase in agency manpower to just over 100,000.
In it’s budget summary, the White House explains that the additional $1.1 billion in extra money will help the IRS “improve service to taxpayers” and “make interactions with the IRS more smooth and effective.”
The words “service,” “smooth” and “effective” are what come to my mind on April 15th, how about you?
The budget increase will support “new investments” in IRS compliance efforts that the administration says will help bring down the deficit, and “The result will be a more nimble, responsive, data-driven IRS that is better able to manage the complex tax administration environment posed by a more global and interconnected economy,” the budget report says.
In his wildest dreams George Orwell couldn’t have crafted such doublespeak.
The Treasury Department budget calls for a doubling of funds for IRS enforcement and the President wants to double the enforcement budget again within five years. Chasing down tax cheats will supposedly save taxpayers $1.3 trillion by the year 2014 according to the IRS. The U.S. government believes it’s losing over $300 billion a year from non-compliance, ten times what the Greek authorities think they’re missing.
With that kind of budget and manpower, IRS agents may soon be tailing the citizenry to determine if our way of life matches what’s on our 1040′s.
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Losing?
You see, the central countrys banks DO have a BOSS….it’s called the “IMF”…PAY UP!
At no point in its entire history has the IRS actually provided a service to the taxpayer – valuable or otherwise. It’s the taxpayer that’s servicing the IRS, in a back alley sort of way.
It all depends on how you define serving. They’re serving us in helping us to pay the federal government. We know how efficient they are and how spot on they are with their “help”. Without them to help us through the maze of tax laws and to do the physical collection I’m sure it would be much more difficult to pay our income taxes. Thank (insert your God here) they are expanding:
http://blog.mises.org/15763/greece-and-america-the-taxman-wants-more/
They provide a great service. All hail the IRS!
I don’t like it when people are called tax cheats.
I prefer the term tax victim.
To think my kids are taught that slavery and indentured servitude no longer exists. What a joke.
In my next life I come back a goldman sachs executive – the whole world is taxed to make your bad investment decisions pay handsomely. And that’s after accounting for your generous profits at the head of the enormous monetary inflation curve. Ah, to be in the inner circle! My only option left is to drop my ambitions onto my kids’ shoulders.
My wife cringes whenever I bring up east coast boarding schools. She’s certainly right to be concerned for the kiddies’ souls. I am concerned too. Rare is the human being that emerges unscathed. But can we at least have one of the kiddies career track to goldman? Dad’s gonna have needs in retirement, and flopping around middle america ain’t gonna quite cut it. In the old days you could give the farm or trade or store to one kid, send one to the priesthood, marry one or two off well and then maybe stake the most talented kid’s attempt to rise within the bureaucracy or military. Now it’s like a stark dividing line between the elite tax feeders and lowlife tax feeders against the schlomo’s who pay the bills. Either be a bum (I have some friends who took that route, and they are amazingly relaxed fellows with nary a care in the world), or work your butt off to make it to goldman. Shite.
Of course, in the midst of all this, loud and firm (but polite) support for the principles of LvMI helps sate the urge to do something good. But that, too, ain’t gonna pay for the retirement. I need a kid at Goldman!
To make it to Goldman Sachs, it’s not what you know, it’s who you know.
No matter how hard you work your butt off, if you are a nobody you will remain a nobody.
I decided I was going to be a bum, but since I’m a libertarian and refuse government handouts, my bum life will be short.
But, after much reflexion and careful thought, I have come to the conclusion that a job and work is doing me no good. It pays for shit, you are bossed around all day and expect to behave like a good pet in his cage. If that’s all that life has to offer me, I’d rather die.
I do have valuable expertise that I could sell, but it would be risky to sell my knowledge and skills because they are illegal and anyways. And since I’m a worthless nobody, nobody will trust me and want to buy my skills anyways. Even if I have what they want, they will want to know who I am and where I came from and since I’m nobody and came from nowhere, there’s no way I could sell my skills.
But I’m fricking tired of working jobs, punching cards, filling out time sheets etc. I decided I no longer want to endure this bullshit and if this means that I won’t be around very long, so be it.
I’d rather die a free man than living a slave.
Let the taxman pay his own bills because I will no longer be part of this bullshit. Paid work is the most taxed source of income and I can no longer accept to do this in good conscience.
As a conscientious objector, I have to stop working, I have to refuse handouts and since nobody will do business with me because my skills are heavily regulated and because I’m a nobody, then I might as well enjoy the downhill while it lasts.
Do you hear that Mr. Taxman, you can pay your own bills, I’m outta here.
Your post reminds me of this line from V for Vendetta:
Valerie: It seems strange that my life should end in such a terrible place, but for three years I had roses and apologized to no one. I shall die here. Every inch of me shall perish. Every inch, but one. An inch. It is small and it is fragile and it is the only thing in the world worth having. We must never lose it or give it away. We must NEVER let them take it from us. I hope that whoever you are, you escape this place. I hope that the worlds turns, and that things get better. But what I hope most of all is that you understand what I mean when I tell you that, even though I do not know you, and even though I may never meet you, laugh with you, cry with you, or kiss you, I love you. With all my heart, I love you. Valerie.
It’s over for me being a wage slave.
I’ll either find another way to make money or perish. I no longer want to be somebody else’s low paid underdog and I’m tired of supporting the taxman.
To be frank, you sound like a Marxist. Working for a living is nothing to be ashamed of or to dread. If you don’t like what you do then do something else. I give you that the government makes it tough to be a self employed entrepreneur, is that you real point?
FF, I know how you feel. Read The Black Swan – good black swans appear, too.
I am worth more to my wife, my ex-wife, and kids dead than alive due to reduced earnings and life insurance benefits. One year after the policies were bought I could commit suicide & they would pay. I wonder sometimes if that would be insurance fraud, but it is in the policy.
What has kept me alive is my wife & wanting to have a comfortable fun future with her – and some hope for my kids. I have spent time over the years learning about liberty as much as I could. It now seems two trends are on a collision course – statism and liberty. I am willing to keep going to see which will win. I am cautiously optimistic, though I get depressed over my own circumstances and my kids’ futures sometimes.
I suggest you earn what you can in whatever field you can enjoy the most. Live frugally & save and invest. I’ve been preparing to try & make enough for my life by trading futures & such (as opposed to “punching a time clock”). Meantime study and try to advance liberty to make this world better. We can each help make a difference ourselves and through the people we encounter. Read Mises’ biography. It inspired me. Perhaps it will inspire you, too. Best regards, Doug Stewart
You don’t need government. The trick is to be so much better than the other guy that they can’t ignore you anymore.
Difficult in an industry where subsidies and protection make it not matter how productive you are. There, they can ignore whoever they like and suffer nothing for it.
Time to get a bucket of tar and some feathers and fight back?
It is amusing that this is exactly what Adam Smith said would happen with excessive taxes. And it is horrorfying that it is also what happened in Wiemar Germany during the hyper-inflation.
“improve service to taxpayers” means open season for auditing. And make no mistake, those auditors will walk away with a pound or 2 of your flesh. Supposedly random audits were challenged and defeated as being unconstitutional a few years back. The IRS however can find plenty of reasons to audit you outside the definitions of “random”.
Cash transactions with no paper trail may be the way of the future in America, hang on to those silver coins.
y’all are just figuring out how screwed up the Greek monetary situation is? It’s been like this since way before I was born. Just because they invented algebra, doesn’t mean they ever bother to use even simple math (unless it can be used in a scam).
I swear my Greek uncle has single-handedly taken down the European economy. You can’t compare the two governments–it’s like comparing apples to koala bears. One has no sense of organization, where the other is trying to organize itself to death.
Krystal,
“Al Gebra” was actually invented by arabs. Just because modern algebra uses greek letters doesn’t mean the greeks invented it.
Are you stupid, or just not Greek? We invented everything, including sarcasm.
Actually, a quick look at Wikipedia shows Algebra’s roots going back to Babylon. Greeks created a “geometric algebra”. Blah blah blah.
Why not go back to Sanskrit?
I thought Al Gore invented Algebra.
“I thought Al Gore invented Algebra.”
You must be thinking of “Algorithm”.
Al Gore only invented two things – Global Warming, and the toilet that does not flush. (The original flush toilet was invented by an Oxford plumber, Sir Thomas Crapper. )
It was originally spelt “algobra” but “algebra” is easier on the tongue
A fed Bear is a dead bear.
http://me.woot.net/vancouver/deadbear.jpg
Feeding Greece with grant aids, the West is creating another beast. Greece has created a virtual reality, with a very strong military, (330 Leopard tanks, F 16 jet fighters, a very powerful Navy, included up to date submarines, and more.)
http://www.fprado.com/armorsite/leo2.htm
http://www.hellas.org/military/navy/
THAT GREEKS CANNOT AFFORD.
The Greek people never learned to pay their taxes …. because no one is ever punished.
To make things more interesting Greece has FREE HEALTH CARE, LUCRATIVE PENSIONS, and HIGH PAID JOBS, which they cannot afford either.
So the WEST is feeding another Bear that soon or later will end in a DEAD BEAR.
Finally:
For each ALBANIAN who changes HIS NAME and HIS NATIONALITY from ALBANIAN to GREEK, the Greek Government pays a pension of 400 Euro for life.
The total is 2 Billion Euros per year and is increasing.
There is where Germany Grant GOES …Shame on GREECE, shame on GERMANY.
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