Greek Finance Minister rejects IMF claims 50% Greeks pay no taxes

Greece’s finance minister Euclid Tsakalotos has come out swinging against the IMF after ‘questionable’ assessment methods and claims about 50% of the Greek population not paying taxes.

Tsakalotos said that if the IMF used the same practices in all the European countries it would know that this percentage is 12% not 40, nor 50. In the same context is included Poul Thomsen’s view that the German pensioners are as wealthy as the Greeks.

“You can only laugh at this and I have invited him to come to Greece and then go to Germany and make the comparison”. “The IMF should decide quickly what it wants to do,” underlined Tsakalotos adding that “if it wants to participate in the programme it must respect the efforts of the Greek people in the last years as well as Europe’s institutional framework for labour. If it wants pressure, it can put pressure on the countries that do not accept more reasonable primary surpluses for Greece,” he underlined. Referring to the course of the negotiation he noted “it is good we are keeping some things for the end of the negotiation because this is what good negotiators do”.

Tsakalotos said that IMF is not interested on the size of the primary surplus in 2019 but uses it to push Greece to reforms on the tax free ceiling and pensions because last summer Greece completed two very important reforms in the pension system and in the taxation, he said to reporters after his address to SYRIZA Central Committee.

“The time is difficult for a Grexit,” he said and underlined that “all parties are trying to find a solution. With some goodwill from all sides we may reach an agreement very soon. We are negotiating very hard,” said Tsakalotos adding that “the negotiation group has not received a blank check and the context of the negotiation always derives from collective decisions.”

Meanwhile European parliament vice president Dimitris Papadimoulis called “anti-constitutional, economically naive and politically unacceptable,” IMF’s demand to the Greek government to legislate 4.5 bln euros additional measures after 2019. “It is inconceivable for an EU state member, either Greece or France or Italy or Germany or Spain to do such a thing. Moreover, to demand more sacrifices from the Greek people in order to service a non-sustainable debt sets at risk the economic and fiscal growth that has been achieved by Athens which followed the mutually agreed commitments,” added Papadimoulis.