Galery

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The action of the economic police in Greece has shown that 53% of tourist sites in the country have been committing tax offences. 707 tax inspections were carried out between 10 and 13 August, which uncovered 1631 tax violations by 373 offenders. The first on the list of areas where there is lack of any fiscal discipline is Lefkada, where each inspected site proved to be violating the tax law. Next are Rhodes, Paros, Andiparos, Kos and Evia, where more than 80% of inspections found one or more offences. Traders in these areas do not only avoid issuing regular receipts but are also making obvious accountability frauds. As a result, local tax offices lose hundreds of millions from unregistered sales and the informal economy is growing despite the crisis. The lowest degree of irregularities is in Alexandroupolis (11%) Ouranoupoli-Irisos-Nea Roda (15%) and Nea Ioaninon (20%).

"We were on a summer vacation on the island of Thassos for a week. The tavernas we visited did not give us any receipt during our stay there," a Bulgarian family, which visited the northern Greek peninsula this year, told GRReporter. According to the economic police, the percentage of tax unfair commercial sites there is 53%, which corresponds to the average rate for tourist areas in the country. Traders use another trick, which is issuing a receipt of less value than that of the order and giving the customers a handwritten bill.

Meanwhile, the police have announced they seized a consignment of 500 thousand packets of illegal cigarettes in the region of Thessaloniki. The police arrested four men aged 50, 53, 68 and 77 years and charged them with violation of the customs code. The police made the breakthrough after having stopped a truck driven by the 53-year-old accused and found with him five boxes of cigarettes that did not have the excise label required by the law. After investigating the case, the authorities found 181 boxes containing 123.6 thousand packets of illegal cigarettes in a warehouse in the region of Evosmos and another 75 packets in the house of the 53-year-old man. They found his accomplices later and the total number of seized illegal packets of cigarettes is 509,430. The detainees will face a prosecutor.