The Hellenic Federation of Enterprises (SEV) on Wednesday recommended a cut in the taxation of large investments to 20 pct and expanding the option of offsetting losses with future earnings from five years currently to 10 years, to safeguard offsetting high losses recorded in the years of successive recession.
SEV also recommended the set up of regional commissions to resolve pending tax disputes which could raise at least 100 million euros annual tax revenue for the next five years.
Eftihios Vasilakis, member of SEV’s board and head of the tax affairs commission, presenting the Federation’s proposals, said that SEV was supporting the idea of a tax certificate – which was introduced in 2011 and 2014 – and led to an increase in tax adherence of enterprises to 92 pct, to expanding a tax base by 5.5 billion euros to annual tax revenue of 400 million euros for the state.
Vasilakis said that over taxation of the most productive and efficient workers of the private sector was a recipe for failure adding that “instead of introducing investment incentives based on tax honesty and consistency, we raise nominal tax factors to the benefit of tax evasion and tax avoidance in an environment of limited liquidity”.
He noted that Greece occupies one of the top positions in a list of EU and OECD states in corporate and labour taxes and recommended expanding the use of e-transactions and e-billing, actions which could boost competitiveness and benefit both enterprises and the state. A survey conducted by the Athens Economic University showed that such a benefit for enterprises could reach 1.5 billion euros annually and for the state up to 1.0 billion euros.
Haris Kyriazis, a member of SEV’s board recommended that the state should award productive spending leading to profitability and encouraging emblem investments on technology, infrastructure, environment, manufacturing, etc.