Troika wants real estate hike via PPC in 2013 too

Seeking to give an answer to troika and the international challengers of the country, like «Spiegel», who argue that tax offices should be privatized as they are not collecting revenue, the Greek Finance ministry recruits over 4,000 auditors- tax collectors.

One month after the troika report criticizing the government for not yet founding and "throwing into battle" against high evasion and collection of overdue debts not even 2,000 tax collectors, as provided in the 2012 memorandum, Yannis Stournaras signed a notice for the filling of 4,091 auditor posts of establish and collect State revenue.

The "Body" of auditors will be staffed by officers of all branches of the Finance ministry, while 65% of new positions will be covered by staff with previous experience in auditing tasks. Through the invitation of these positions the Greek government also expects to avoid thousands of removals of qualified civil servants due to redundancies.

Meanwhile, however, troika wants to keep the real estate hike collected so far through PPC in 2013 as well, as the decisions on single real estate tax are postponed until the end of the year and the whole project seems uncertain. Troika is also "plowing" again the ministries of Administrative Reform, Development, Labour and Interior seeking measures to reduce staff in the public sector, support liquidity and a solution to the settling of debts from taxes and contributions to pension Funds.

Especially for the latter and for settling debts from loans to banks, troika auditors appear moore conciliatory than in the past days. They seem to have a better understanding of the differences between taxes and levies on businesses in Greek reality, as a government member said, while progress has also been reported on the draft regulation on home loans.