Forbes
October 6, 2011
The only thing certain in life is death and taxes. Except if you live in Greece, where as the New Yorker’s James Surowiecki puts it, “tax evasion is the national pastime.” To fix the problem, the government is going to start tracking its citizens’ spending in real-time.
Surowiecki and others have attributed much of Greece’s financial woes to its huge untaxed shadow economy, which is estimated to be more than a quarter of its GDP (In the U.S., just 9% of our GDP is in the dark.) Greece has come up with interesting, technological ways to find tax evaders, including looking at satellite images to see how many people were lying about having home pools. While 324 people in one area had reported having a pool on their tax forms, almost 17,000 homes in that area in fact had water-filled holes in the ground in their backyards when viewed from above. (Thanks, Google Maps!)
Some studies suggest that Greece is missing out on $30 billion in taxes, so the cash-strapped country is trying something new: forcing consumers to track their spending with a government-issued tax card.
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