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The government headed by Antonis Samaras is looking for new ways to stimulate the issuance, collection and accounting of receipts. The government intends to introduce another change in the tax system under which taxpayers must present receipts for the greatest possible amount in order to prove their annual income. The difference between the declared income and the expenses, as evidenced by primary accounting documents, will be charged with 25% VAT.

The government hopes to break the vicious circle of undeclared trade in shops, which will increase the tax revenues. It believes it will thus stop tax unfairness in certain professions such as lawyers, doctors, dentists and technicians, who traditionally do not issue receipts. The ultimate goal of the measure is to minimize the informal economy. Its turnover in Greece is around 20 billion euro and annually deprives the treasury from five to eight billion euro in uncollected taxes.

On the base of trial and error, Greek politicians have so far rejected several options, in which receipts should have played a key role. Minister of Finance George Papaconstantinou in the government of George Papandreou announced that all taxpayers must submit with their tax returns receipts amounting to 25% of their annual income. If they collected more receipts than required, the tax service would refund them with part of the tax paid. In 2010, this measure proved to be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it gave a very serious incentive for citizens to require receipts from traders in Greece. On the other hand, the government had to spend a lot of money - over one billion euro, to return the people some of the taxes, as they had tried and had collected more receipts than the required minimum. At the same time, tax revenue did not increase but began to decline because the recession in Greece had deepened.

Papaconstantinou decided for the fiscal 2011 that the state could not afford to give extra incentives for citizens to obey the law. Taxpayers again had to collect receipts but this time for 30% of the declared income. The difference was that if the taxpayer submitted an amount higher than the required minimum he would not receive part of the income tax paid and might be even taxed at a higher rate. From that moment on, the enthusiasm of the Greeks to collect receipts started fading again. Currently, the government is considering how to leave no other option to citizens but to drive them to insist on a receipt at any cost. A 25% tax on the amount of annual income, for which no receipt has been submitted, seems a sufficient incentive for consumers to make obtaining receipts a priority.

Another measure that the government is considering to fight tax unfairness is to reduce the minimum amount that can be paid non-electronically. To date, deals amounting to 1,500 euro could be paid in cash. The Finance Ministry is willing to reduce the amount to 300 euro from next fiscal year onwards. In other words, there should be a bank payment for every legal transaction exceeding 300 euro. The financial institution will automatically transfer the VAT payable to the tax authorities, which will significantly facilitate the tax services in the process of collecting VAT. This will support the banking sector, will increase transparency in transactions, but will burden entrepreneurs, who rely on working money. The Ministry of Finance is considering giving one euro per every 100 euro paid with a credit or debit card for the payment of obligations to government institutions. It will also make a 3% discount on the tax if paid by a card. It is not known whether it will benefit the consumers, given that interest rates on credit cards can exceed 20%.